What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

From the title, I assumed it would be a sweet book, like a dessert, something that makes you happy and pink. However, it turned out to be graphic and blue.

I have always believed in love. It exists as long as you approach it from the right way. In a healthy relationship, a couple should be best friends. They should be each other's extended family, the one who the other could turn to and talk to when he/she is in distress.

In one story, there is a doctor, Mel. He talked about his day to his wife and friends over dinner. There was an old couple hit by a car driven by a drunk teenager. Mel said: I dropped in to see each of them everyday, sometimes twice a day. Casts and bandages, head to foot, the both of them. You know, you've seen it in the movies. That's just the way they looked, just like in the movies. Little eye-holes and nose-holes and mouth-holes. And she had to have her legs slung up on top of it. Well, the husband was very depressed for the longest while. Even after he found out that his wife was going to pull through, he was still very depressed. Not about the accident, though. I mean, the accident was one thing, but it wasn't everything. I'd get up to his mouth-hole, you know, and he would say no, it wasn't the accident exactly but it was because he couldn't see her through his eye-holes. He said that was what was making him feel so bad. Can you imagine? I'm telling you, the man's heart was breaking because he couldn't turn his goddamn head and see his goddamn wife."

Mel looked around the table and shook his head at what he was going to say.

"I mean, it was killing the old fart because he couldn't look at the fucking woman." 

Mel continued:"You guys (a couple) have been together eighteen months and you love each other. You have both been married before, just like us. And you probably loved each other people before that too, even. Terri and I have been together five years, been married for four. And the terrible thing, the terrible thing is, but the good thing too, the saving grace, you might say, is that if something happened to one of us--excuse me for saying that--but if something happened to one of us tomorrow, I think the other one, the other person, would grieve for a while, you know, but then the surviving party would go out and love again, have someone else soon enough. All this, all of this love we are talking about, it would just be a memory. Maybe not even a memory. Am I wrong? Am I way off base? Because I want you to set me straight if you think I'm wrong. I want to know. I mean, I don't know anything, and I am the first one to admit it."

Can't imagine what life is like for two people so deeply in love. Bothering trivialities must have been a treat. Shopping for groceries would not be boring; sweeping the floor would not be tiring; doing laundry would not be bothering. How could a person be so lucky to find the beloved who loves back.