Crossing the Chasm

There's been a particular posting that my cousin Paul made over the weekend that I find myself coming back to, over and over again. In it he says this: Forgiveness is hard. Especially in marriages tense with past troubles and torn by suspician and distrust.

It sticks in my head, probably cos it's the God-to-honest truth. In every living creature and being, we are born with a self-preservation button. Some of us press it when we have to, and some of us have a somewhat faulty one - it gets stuck on "lock mode" once it has been pressed.

Which takes me to thinkng... there's an unwritten 2nd part to that post which Paul has yet to touch on: Forgetting is even harder. It would likely be something Paul would not touch on cos he's the sorta chap who dwells not on yesterdays, lives for todays and tomorrows. So on this lil rabbit hole I must go on my own...

I have always marvelled at couples with more silver on their head than black (or blonde, auburn or brown), how they withstood the test of time, man and self. What's their magic formula when it comes to this forgiving-and-forgetting? Cos Lord only knows, in life and relationships, particularly marriages where a commitment before man and God has been made, there would be times when the perception of perfection gets tarnished and we are faced with the situation either to polish it clean, chuck it away or stick it at the back of the closet.

Last week my dad surprised me when he rose to the ocassion of my mum being installed in the hospital. Many years back, quite possibly due to work commitments, he was hardly there as she lay in the sickbed from a collapsed lung. This time round, he's gone out of his usual ways to be more than just there for her, shouldering bits of responsibilities in the house as well. Even mum noticed it, and it was something that warmed my heart cos in this, I saw in my own parents, the silver-haired couples that I have envied from afar, when before this I thought all that held them together was the fear of God and their grandkids.

And I think back to the times of their cold-wars, the raging shouting matches (and dad rarely shouts so when he does, it's a situation!), the threats of bags packing to up and going. How all those times pale in comparison to watching dad's face slowly turn a shade paler as the time passed by and there was no sight nor sound of mum coming out of the operating room.

I know if I were to ask either of them "What's the secret?" They would tell me that it's an indication of what the word "vow" means to them. And how its definition goes beyond "keeping to one's word." And how people can and will change over time, surprising us when it is for the better.

I am thinking all this cos I am watching a dear friend hurt and live in pain, and I have exhausted all my wittism and humour to try and pull her out of it. I'm trying to gain perspective, and thru this, my hope that she too will gain perspective. To stay focussed, ignoring for now all the superflous characters that serves no direct purpose in her life, the distraction of "agents of evil" that reside in her head.

As Linkin Park's new song from the Transformers movie goes:

So give me reason to prove me wrong, to wash this memory clean

Let the floods cross the distance in your eyes

Give me reason to fill this hole, connect the space between

Let it be enough to reach the truth that lies across this new divide

I guess in choosing to share your life with someone else, you relinquish the right to "keep score." Cos each 'x' or '0' only serves to create yet another divide.

As our favourite TV show says: Forgive yourself, you can only hurt so much. So dearie ~ if they can make an episode out of it and we can spend out hard earned monies buying the CDs, and our time to watch it - there must be some truth in that.