Memoir

My Bride — Homage

“Until the Night is Done,” A Love Story by a Grandfather

My Bride of 40+ years was diagnosed with corticobasal degeneration (CBD) five years ago, a rare disease today called “corticobasal syndrome.” She has slowly progressed down that rabbit hole, and unless a new drug is found to work, the disease will force us apart at some point.

The cruelty of the disease is to make the most wonderful person in my world disappear, tiny bit by tiny bit. And she knows this, too. We decided, “Every day is new; take life as it comes and make the best of it.”

When I heard the poem-song by Luke Sital Singh, “Until the Night is Done,” it hit a cord in me that made me think and inspired me. I wrote a Valentine for my Bride in 2022. This story is based on that.

“I found that letter that you wrote to me…”

As I Heard the music and Read this poem, the first thing that struck me was your letters when I was in Venezuela. We were set to get married when I got back. And our little condominium was ready for us.

Our outcome differed from the love story described in the song because we married into a happy life.

I remember my American Brother from my University days, Jeff, coming to our wedding even though he was already fighting for his life with leukemia.

Nothing had prepared me to see Jeff die before his time with Leukemia. Jeff was a tall, strong man. He was my main teacher for learning English as we were taking Calculus at UNM University.

We built so many memories as we ran together through Albuquerque in his 1963 Falcon Futura until we both graduated.

Jeff and Sue lived with us while he went to MD Anderson Cancer Center for treatments. When he needed platelets, a bunch of friends from work came with me to donate.

He gave the disease a good fight, leaving his lovely wife, Sue, and children behind. My Brother Jeff will be with me forever.

However, as My Bride and I built our life together, we did not know the outcome waiting for us 40+ years later.

We worked, we saved, we had a family. A loving family. We planned to travel as our children graduated from college and I retired.

Then, this struck and became the priority. It was just a minor detail at the beginning. Your ability to write diminished slowly; I could not read it. You denied it at first, but later, you could not read it.

We learned the hard truth when we saw a specialist and tests were done.

All the lovely moments we had together since we got together, a lifetime away, came back. It is safe to say, a life we recorded as we knew then, in thousands of pictures.

“And suddenly, the fog surrounding me lifted high above enough to see.”

And I felt the deep voice of wailing emerging from my realization of our life walk together and where we are now. So, “I’ve been lying on the edge of the road giving up,”…But I can’t; every moment is precious; thus, “I’m standing again, and I am ready to start.”

As he says, my fear is human, but I won’t let it be in my path, no matter how much it cuts.

However, I do walk half asleep because I only deal with the “present.” Loving my bride every second of every day. Time is precious.

It is also true that “I feel safer when I am dreaming.”

My deep, deep wail makes me feel like burning the world away. We want to be together and make this precious time count. Make new memories when we can.

But I know, as I sleep, “You will NOT go HOME until MY night is done.”

My secret heart wishes that you “not grow old with your body young.” But this cruel thing is making you disappear in front of our eyes.

Your spirit will be in me, though I know you will take half of my spirit with you when the night is done.

Everywhere I look, you will look. You will be with me everywhere I am…until my night is done.

Then we will join our spirits and Live happily ever after.

I love you more than words can say. I know you love me too. And this is why we will live forever.

The Song and the Lyrics, written by Luke Sital-Singh, made me reflect on the angst that I carry within me. Today, my main purpose for living is to be there for her.

This woman made me the man I am today.

She transformed a brute, nothing-can-stop-him type of man who drank, smoked cigarettes, cigars, pipes, and chewed tobacco in refineries and steel plants into a gentile husband who does not drink or smoke and a loving father and grandfather.

I am saying that she never suggested I stop or start anything. She created an environment where the only choice left for me was to follow through with these decisions. I stopped smoking before my first daughter was born; I stopped drinking before my first grandchild was born.

On the other hand, she built a house full of love and understanding while I traveled extensively, sometimes absent for a year at a time. I was absent to the point where she had to decide and buy the house we live in today almost by herself, where I basically showed up to sign the paperwork.

Her patience and understanding and her power of forgiveness were and are profound. Many times, I compared her with “Santa Rosa,” a saint known for her love and kindness to all living things. She would reply, “No, you don’t know what goes through my mind sometimes.” I would reply, “But even priests and nuns think like that!” We had lots of laughs.

Today, the God that created the Universe, a place so complex we may never get to understand it all, is testing her humanity, and she is pressing on with the same love she’s always had. She worries about me…

Her children love her deeply and want to be with her as much as they can, although neither is nearby. Every moment they are with her is precious.

Once upon a time, as I was home, my oldest asked me a math question. She wanted to solve it the “way the teacher did it in the classroom.” I replied, “Math can be solved many different ways, and they all yield the same answer.”

I proceeded to explain to her the history of Algebra, how the Arabs invented it, and how much of this was lost in the fire of the library of Alexandria. She gathered her books and paper and explained to me as she was getting up, “I need to solve this problem in Math, not in history. I will go to Mami; she just helps me solve problems when I need help.”

There are times when Lisé feels like she is not present for her grandchildren to play with them like she used to, and this makes her sad. However, they come to her as if she has never changed and invite her to play, and when we are home, during Facetime, they like to tell her stories, which makes her very happy.

Her eyes still have rays of light, and I like to tell her, to her dismay, “God has given you the grace of heaven; I see that in your eyes and your way of being. You make me a happy man every day.” And, in my mind, I thank God she is with us, so far, every day.

I am a Lucky Man, indeed.

What might my story mean to you?

In this story, I want to convey the crucial message that when we fall in love and convey to that human being the need to be together, we make an inviolable promise to look after each other with infinite empathy “for as long as we shall live” (minimally).

Our humanity is elevated by love to a new height. It is a new life. It is like the force of gravity that keeps us glued to this planet, but it lets us work and build a life to a future.

As I explained in My Story, “LOVE runs deeper with time when you marry true to yourself and meet an equal partner.” Then, we are able to pursue that life.

However, like the universe, nothing is perfect; everything comes to an end. Entropy eventually takes over in the short run (we die).

The elevated emotion of Love allows us to elevate our thoughts to eternal life together. After the universe runs out of energy and entropy wins, Gravity takes over again and reduces everything that was built to an infinitesimal point of infinite energy that explodes again, and our history gets rewritten.

Machado said it best in his Poem “Caminante (Walker),” as seen in “My Story.”

Walker, your threads are The path and nothing more; Walker, there is no path. The path is made when walking.

When walking the path is made And when looking back you see, The path that never Will be walked again.

Walker, there is no path, But trails in the sea…

Love is Everything, my love!