Who are the greatest lovers?

Thursday during my "Guitar and Life 101" class with the guys and girls down at the Nespelem Tribal Jail, I sang a couple of love songs, and told them the story of meeting the longest-married couple I had ever encountered. They were an Adventist doctor and his wife, in their mid-90's.

I visited them in the Senior Care Center, where she'd been placed after her mind began to wander to the point where she was unable to recall the names of immediate family members (though the section of her mind filled with many familiar hymns she still loved to sing seemed entirely unimpaired). When I stopped by for a pastoral visit, he was sitting beside her wheelchair, holding her hand quietly.

In the course of the conversation, I asked her, "When did you and your husband first meet?" She looked through me for a long minute, her faded eyes searching over space and time. Then she focused on me again. "I'm sorry," she said slowly, "I don't remember when we met."

I went home that evening, and told my wife, "I want to be married to you for so long, you've forgotten when we met."

"Seven out of ten songs written are love songs," I told the young adults in my guitar class, "and there still aren't enough love songs in the world. If you want to know what it takes to find love and keep it burning over a lifetime, don't ask the Young Lovers, like Romeo and Juliet. Instead, go ask the Old Lovers you know, those who have been married 40, 50, 60, 70 years, or more. They are the deep wells for this sort of life wisdom, which in our day, when a seven year relationship is considered 'long term', is something that ought to be bottled and passed out on street corners for free!"

It takes a new crop of Young Lovers, or there will never be any Old Lovers, of course. But those just starting out do have a place to turn for life coaching on the essential skills required for a love that lasts a lifetime. A great many of these are found in Christian Churches, sitting quietly together in pews, or holding hands in forgotten nursing home rooms.