The Most Beautiful Woman I Have Ever Seen...

I sighed, content, as I read over the last sentence and closed the book before me. Yet another beautifully written and disgustingly perfect love story had come to an end. It had been one of those stories. The kind that made me cry, made me laugh, made me gasp for air when a heart was broken and made my soul heal once the heart was mended.

It always seemed so easy in stories. Love, that is. There would be a look, a spark, ups and downs and then they would be. They would be everything they had been meant to be. Together, one mind, one soul, happy, complete, eternal, perfect…and still utterly fictional. That was the thought that depressed me most after I came down from the high a good love story always gave me. It was all Fiction.

In everyday life love was not a common thing. It never was. Not back when we lived in caves and all thought was directed towards perpetuating the species. Not back when we built homes and communities and learned to kill for reasons beyond survival. Not back when our minds blossomed and we began to take from the world and create for more than just survival. Not back when survival was assured even to the poor and greed became an overwhelming part of humanity. Not back when we realized how much we had scarred the world and pretended that we cared. Not now when all we do is dream from day to day and ignore what the past is trying to teach. No, it seems love is not meant to survive in this world we have come to be a part of.

And yet, we thrive on it. Even when no one seems to truly find it we all look for it. We sing, write, and yell for it, to it and about it. Nothing we create ever succeeds if there is not some attempt at the emotion. Science and technology comes from the love man has for knowledge. Music, art and the written words comes from the love man has of his surroundings. But even after all our attempts it is still not enough, we are still looking for that one, ever elusive, feeling if true love.

When we look back at our lives we do not measure ourselves by our grades in school or our trophies for endless accomplishments. We do not measure ourselves by the amount of money or titles to our name. Material possessions seem nothing and even knowledge seems to fade. No, we all measure ourselves by the love we think we have lived. There is always that one that got away. There is always one that should have been. There is always the one who broke us or took more than we were willing to give. There is always the one that we thought was but never should have been. But there is seldom simply “the one”.

Bitter and heartbroken before I can even legally drink my sorrows away, I still have to admit that I am lucky. I may have not found “the one”, I may never do so but I have seen, known and cared for someone who did. And even after the bitter sweet ending that was nothing like in the books and movies, I still find myself wishing to have at least a taste of it before my end. Yes, I have seen true love.

But unlike the book in my hands, there is no sigh of contentment when I remember what I have seen. I saw 20 years of true love, and I saw but a third of the whole story. The rest came to me through black and white photographs, spoken memories in broken, teary voices and through on simple question.

A question I will never forget.

Isn’t she the most beautiful woman you have ever seen?

And to him she was. She had always been, she still is and will always be. Some things burn themselves into our minds and we can never forget, no, even if we wanted to, even if we tried, even if the Gods themselves tried to rip the memory from our souls. Some things become a part of who we are, if we forgot we would cease to be. That question is one of those things for me.

Whenever I think of it, it is so much more than a memory, it is a twist in reality and suddenly I am sixteen again…

It is December and even though the afternoon is cool, the house we are in is sweltering hot. It is my grandfather's home. Yet another December and we have driven three days from our home to spend Christmas with him and his wife. After eight years of taking the trip it was nothing but a hardship for me. I hated the long drive, the seedy motels, the constant bickering with my sibling and Christmas itself was my own personal Hell. Green and red made me want to throw up. Santa Claus looked more and more like a creepy old pedophile each year. Family was nothing but a cruel form of punishment. And standing in that house with the thermostat set at 80 degrees Fahrenheit I was contemplating the odds of survival if I attempted to walk all the way back home.

The thermostat remained untouched year round. For your grandmother, he would say, she gets cold. I would smile and pretend that I did not feel like I was in a sauna and that Christmas was not what I hated most about every year. Twelve days we would stay. My sister would watch old cartoons. I would read. My mother would clean and cook and tend to my grandfather’s every need. My father would sleep and relax, having taken the brunt of driving three days straight and when my grandfather was not busy, they would argue politics. Not that my father would ever win, but it was something to do. If I felt like pushing my grandfather’s buttons I would join in too. Sadly, this was probably the highlight of my entire Christmas holiday. When silence threatened to fall we would all load up into the car and head to the mall. Shopping. Yet another thing I can no longer tolerate for more than ten minutes at a time.

And my grandmother? In her room, always in her room. The only place she could be. It was not always so. My grandmother was a proud and hardworking woman once upon a time. She was once a beauty, strong, confident, a God fearing Christian woman. She was once a woman in love and a devoted mother of two sons. She was once alive within her own body, but not anymore. She was long gone.

She shared a room with my grandfather though to share a bed had become impossible years ago. I avoided the room like the plague. Only once in those twelve days would I set foot inside it. On New Year’s Eve, when my grandfather, having become a God fearing man thanks to his wife, would call us to pray together. Ten minutes at the most but it always felt eternal.

Often times I would feel like the worst granddaughter to ever walk the earth. It certainly felt so when my mother would glare at me as I scurried pass my grandmother’s room without so much as a sideways glance. It certainly felt so when my father would look upon his wiltering mother with longing before looking back at me expecting me to do something, anything. It certainly felt so when my sister would bounce in her seat excited to see grandma and grandpa and I was already counting the seconds until we left. It most certainly felt so when my grandfather would look at me with a smile and pretend that he did not notice me avoiding the love of his life.

No one ever did ask me why I avoided her. No, they were too busy giving me upset glares and not so subtle hints as to whom I should be visiting. No one ever bothered to ask me why. No one wanted to know. I was already an ungrateful teenager; this was just probably another one of my antics. Why should it, would it, could it be for any other reason than that? And I never bothered to set them straight. It did not seem to matter at the time. I am not sure if it matters now. But even if they had asked I do not think I could have explained myself. How do you explain the pain? The heart clenching pain that would steal my breath away every time I looked at her. The pain of looking down at a decaying and broken body with not even the shadow of who she once was…

She was no longer the woman I had known as a child. The vibrant and loving grandmother. The loyal and caring wife. The stead fast and wise mother. No, she was long gone. Eleven years of Alzheimer’s had seen to that. Having studied in a field related to medicine she had seen the signs coming. And she had begged for someone to end it before it came to be. She knew as her memories start to fade, what she would become. And all we could do is watch. Watch as she forgot she had grandchildren. Watch as she forgot she had children and a husband. Watch as she forgot entirely the man she loved even though he was still ever faithful at her side. It seemed she was in her own little world, reliving her entire life in a fast rewind, time only slowing down for the things she wished she had already forgotten. Over the years she forgot all that made her who she was. Until she looked into a mirror and did not know that it was herself she was talking to.

But life is cruel, and it did not stop there. It kept on and on, Alzheimer’s was determined to end her one way or another. The years continued to roll by and she forgot how to walk, she forgot how to eat, and suddenly she was an adult sized baby. And we watched, as my grandfather refused help and took care of her himself. A man nine years her junior carrying her to and fro, to wash, to eat, to dress, to sleep. And on every Sunday he would spend the long hours of care to make her look her best and accompany her to church. Because she had been a God fearing woman, and her love for the Lord had been what saved my grandfather and made him fall in love. She gave me the best years of her life, he would say, so now I am giving her mine.

It took sixteen years for Alzheimer’s to finally win, but win it did. Soon after their 50th wedding anniversary that she was not even able to enjoy. It was a relief to all. It was time. She had long since been gone and it pained us all. She had stopped eating, her body no longer able to remember something as natural as swallowing. My grandfather is a proud man. He survived the streets and gangs of New York. He survived in the military where he met the love of his life. He worked long hours, countless days, any and every job to give his wife and children all the things he believed they deserved. He worked and put his wife through college as well. He made sure she had more than she ever needed because she was all he needed to be alive. Having lived all this and more, he was not a man to succumb to tears. But cry he did the day it all finally ended.

But the end would come four, almost five years after that question. The question that showed me what it was to have, live and love “the one”. Like I said, I was sixteen and it was but another agonizing year of tradition. I cannot say what compelled me to enter the room on that occasion. For the first time in years I stood from my bed, set down the book I was reading and walked into my grandmother’s room. And I looked at her.

She lay in bed, half asleep half awake. Her chocolate brown skin clung to her face glowing from the sweat that covered her body, her cheeks sunken into her face. Her eyes fluttered every now and then her lips muttering things only the Gods will ever know. Her hair cut short, barely an inch long, streaked with gray and her once beautiful curls seemed burnt. In spite of the heavy covers you could see her frail, underweight body, the bulge around her abdomen due to her diaper, not her weight. And her whole body twitching with the Parkinson’s disease she had just been diagnosed with. As if the Gods felt that her wounds needed a bit of salt.

I do not know how long I stood there. Too painful to stay, too painful to leave. And then I was not alone with my grandmother anymore. No, my grandfather had come. We stood in silence, and for a moment the pain was gone. The entire room filled with calm and I could almost hear the memories running through my grandfather’s mind. I could almost taste the emotions in the air around us. And then he spoke…

Isn’t she the most beautiful woman you have ever seen?

I looked up at my grandfather, tears in both our eyes, but we would never let them fall. I looked back at the woman before me and for a second I could see her. The woman he fell in love with all those years ago. For the first time in years I reached out and touched her. Barely grazing her fingertips with my own. I leaned in and placed a light kiss to her brow before leaving her to her husband.

Then and there, at the age of sixteen I had seen it. Witnessed it in all its might and glory. True love.

And if I read a thousand love stories it would never come close.

And if I never lived it myself I would still be more fortunate than most.

Because I looked at her and she was, still is, the most beautiful woman I have ever seen...