In Sickness and in Health

While I could say a lot of things about that, I can’t possibly say it any better than Chico in this blog post.

Here comes a guy who stood by his girl, even if on the surface, she’s but a shell of her former self. Their ordeal is tough to watch in a less than 5 minute segment, but these people are permanent residents in the story we merely visited.

Isn’t this what we’re all looking for? Stripped of the romance and the fairytale embellishments and the wine and roses, you look for someone who’d walk down the road of life with you. Not just in those grand gestures, but in the everyday grind, and especially during the moments of ugliness and despair. They showed a video of his proposal to her (I think she worked for Starbucks) with videos and lights flashing from cameras. Nice, right? But he was also there for her when no one was there to witness, to celebrate, to commiserate. I’m sure there were many times when it was just him and her, or at least what seemed like what was left of her, and he stayed.

When old couples say that the fiery storm of passion will eventually die and will be replaced instead by much smaller, much quieter steady flame, many singles protest, insisting they want a relationship that will rage on for the rest of their union. It’s hard to explain how it’s not the same, but it’s not necessarily less. Arguably it’s superior on many counts. Ask your parents (if they’re in a successful long-term marriage) or any couple who’ve survived the ravages of the years, and you’ll get the same sentiment. It’s this quiet simmer that makes you stay when all the attractive raiment have been stripped away, when all is left is the barest of souls, the very essence of the person you’ve chosen to love. So it wouldn’t matter if they’re older, or uglier, or fatter, or sick, or disabled, or a mere shadow of their former glorious selves, it doesn’t matter because what you love is beyond reach of the unkind years. It would be untouched by age or disease.

It makes me wax philosophical because he lives what many merely aspire for. We get to eat popcorn as we watch his tale like a movie, and when it’s done, we go back to our lives, none the worse for wear. They on the other hand, don’t get to leave; they are the movie. And when Chris finally sang his audition piece, it was the coup de grace. He sang The Script’s “Breakeven”. Of course the song was about how, in break-ups, hearts don’t break even. But Chris singing it brings it to a whole new level. In their situation, their hearts don’t break even as well. His heart breaks seeing what his loved one is going through. His heart breaks not knowing if he’ll ever get back the version of the girl he’s loved with all his heart. His heart breaks choosing between another less complicated life and staying because he can’t leave when she needs him the most. Her heart breaks putting her man through all this. Her heart breaks seeing the difficulty he’s going though as he puts up with challenges in her life. Her heart breaks thinking if she’s depriving him of a happier life elsewhere.

You can tell it hit a raw nerve. It’s the aspect of love at it’s most unattractive, but at the same time it’s love at it’s most unadulterated. I don’t know if Chris will coast to the finals on the wings of his story, but his tale will stick with me for a long time. If I can do that for someone, or if I’ve found someone who’ll do that for me, I’d consider myself mighty blessed.

This piece reminded me of the movie I watched a few days ago – Love and Other Drugs. The film revolves around Jamie and Maggie, who are both free-spirited people who don’t want to tie themselves down in relationships and start off as – umm – f*** buddies. Maggie actually has Parkinson’s disease which she knows has no cure hence she doesn’t want to be anyone’s burden or perhaps, she’s just afraid that whoever would care at first would eventually leave her and she doesn’t want to get hurt. But Jamie falls for her and they decide to give an actual relationship a shot. Everything goes well until the day they attend a convention for people with the disease and a guy there tells Jamie that the disease would eventually steal everything he loves in his partner and that he should run while he still can. Then Jamie carts Maggie all over the country to chase for a cure and Maggie lets him go, knowing that he couldn’t love her without knowing that she could get better. In the end, though, Jamie realizes that she is the only person who ever loved him and whom he would love, so he runs after her and they have this touching conversation that more or less went like this:

Jamie: I have never cared about anybody or anything in my entire life, and people have accepted that. And then you… you didn’t think of me that way. I have never known anyone who actually believed that I was enough until I met you, and then you made me believe too. So unfortunately, I need you and you need me.
Maggie: I don’t need you.
Jamie: Yes you do… someone to take care of you. Everybody does.
Maggie: I’m going to need you more than you need me.
Jamie: That’s okay.
Maggie: No, it’s not! It isn’t fair. I have places to go.
Jamie: And you’ll go there. I just may have to carry you.
Maggie: I can’t let you do that.
Jamie: Let’s imagine a world where there’s this couple, and they’re perfectly healthy and their only problem is whether they really need to hire that cleaning lady. Well I don’t want to be those people. I want us. This.

For better or for worse, in sickness and in health, till death do you part. Whoever wrote those lines was a genius.

P.S. I really liked this line from the voiceover at the end too: “You meet thousands of people and none of them really touch you. And then you meet that one person and your life is changed. Forever.”