True Love

A heart-felt realisation

I had a call from my cousin a few days ago to tell me his baby girl (his second daughter) was heartbroken.

Yet another boyfriend had exploited her gentle and caring nature and dumped her via social media. She was devasted and had phoned my cousin to pour out her heart to him.

Now, my cousin is the softest macho man I know, and he’d most probably kill for his four children, and maybe even for his wife if she’s lucky. He’s all fiery smoke and has brought up his wonderful teenage kids with the fear of God, or someone or something to that extent.

They love their dad truly, sprinkled, thankfully, with a healthy portion of critical thinking.

What was bugging my cousin was, on the one hand, he wanted to extinguish “that son of a b****” for what he’d done to his daughter. He knew only too well how these guys tick. In the heyday of his womanizing back in college, he’d not been much better in his treatment of “kind and loving” girls.

On the other hand, not wanting to cause her more grief, his nurturing and protective feelings for his daughter strongly forbade him to take the law into his own hands.

“You know what?” he digressed, “Ever since I heard the song, ‘I Wanna Know What Love Is’ as a teenager …- you know it?”

“Yep”, I remembered. Foreigner the name of the group, not my taste.

“ … well, I’ve been on a crusade to find out what true love is.”

Was I hearing right, my ex-Casanova cousin seriously wondering what true love was? And wanting to discuss this with me, his older female cousin who is not the most romantic of persons either.

“Anyway,” he mused, “I think the nearest I ever came to feeling true love for anybody was for my mother.”

Now, this didn’t surprise me. My cousin and his younger brother had adored their very pretty and gentle mother and when she died of cancer at the age of 63, it had not only been a painful shock to us all but detrimental to my cousins. She’d been short of holy for them, and they sorely missed her unconditional love.

“But she’s your mother.” I reminded him gently.

“Ok, ok,” he laughed, and jokingly added, “then let’s say 99% of my love for my mother is true love.”

His reflective mode was gathering pace and I was intrigued as to what would come next. Would he mention his wife of 25 years wedlock in his percentual true love calculations?

Well, he did as an afterthought, and then came full circle back to his heartbroken daughter.

“You know what I did after I listened to her tearful tale on the phone?”

“No”, I answered.

“I ordered her to come right back home. I requested her older sister to do the same and when they got here, I told them, including my wife and our two sons, to gather in the sitting room. I asked them all, me included, to put their arms around each other and form a circle.

I told Elly (his heartbroken daughter), to stand in the middle and let her feelings go. She burst out crying and as her tears flowed, we all hugged and reassured her that no matter what happened, whatever sorrows she might encounter, we loved her and would always be there for her. Just as we would always be there for each other.”

“You see, Sylvia, it was then I realized what true love means for me, namely my whole family.”