Great love brings people closer together and paradoxically ultimate love sets people apart as a gift of love.
The love between Anita and Richard had been exemplified as the model of love between two hearts. They were always together, sharing each other’s joys and sorrows, comforting and jubilating with each other’s circumstances. The marriage date had been fixed and preparations were on.
A month to the wedding, they went on a picnic with friends. Fun and happiness were in the air until a shout was heard. Anita had dived into the river and was now struggling. Help came and she was rescued. But she was numb. A trip to the hospital confirmed the worst, she has been paralyzed from the neck down as a result of the dive that hit her head in the shallow water and broke her spinal cord.
During her recovery period Richard was always by her side; loving her, writing her poems, singing for her and almost living by her side. He vowed to love her till death do them part. The marriage was to go on. That he really loved her was not in doubt.
But she felt different; she has to release him to love someone else who would be a wife she can’t be to him. She pleaded with him to go, to gain his freedom but he protested. He felt he was betraying her in her time of need but she told him that her greatest gift of love is to let him go and find happiness elsewhere. She was almost a vegetable and would be a great demand for his future life as a husband. Yet she insisted he had to go.
This demonstrates that great love is not selfish, it is selfless. It endures pain with happiness, it is like a living sacrifice, losing your most ‘in happiness’ to give your most ‘loved object’ the crown of love. It is not faithlessness in a better tomorrow ‘of healing’ but a gift for better-sustained happiness. It is a final gift no other than death could achieve. It is a gift of a great human heart, a gift of courage, a gift of a wish for a greater tomorrow; a paradoxical gift of love and freedom.