Seventy-Year-Old Love

Valentine’s Day. I am musing about many of the images of valentines: hearts, candies, flowers and a sense that the valentine recipients are young. Their love is romantic, fresh; often unblemished, untested. If the card portrays a pair of hands holding each other, they probably are youthful, smooth, warm and endearing.

Recently I read The Old Ones of New Mexico, a book about the grand and great-grandparents of the children that researcher Robert Coles studied in New Mexico. Through the text I touched into the love of 70 to 90-year-old elders. They became personal valentines to me. I knew the usual kind of valentine would not do for them—from me to them or to each other. Photos showed their wrinkled faces and their shoulders often bent over, giving evidence of their lives of labor, worry and carrying burdens. Their hands are weather-worn and calloused; they have cared for many people, things and dreams. Images portray men wearing hats to protect them from the sun that can be brutal.

Valentine’s Day for hearts of mature love, regardless of age even as I refer to them as persons of 70-year-old love, have been formed and tested by tragedies, hopes, joys and accomplishments along with misunderstandings and dreams dashed in disappointment. They have developed wise perceptions about life, endurance and trust in God to bring good out of whatever is happening. Their development has happened with the support and challenges of their family and community. From such influences wise people are formed. I stand to honor and celebrate them in ways that go beyond cards, words written or spoken, candy and flowers.

Valentine’s Day. I draw on these words of elderly Domingo to honor and celebrate 70-year-old love—and all mature love of spouses, friends, family members. He also gives me a goal to which to strive in my life. Domingo says of his wife, Dolores, “She is not just an old woman, you know. She wears old age like a bunch of fresh-cut flowers. She is old, advanced in years, vieja (old woman), but in Spanish we have another word for her, a word which tells you that she has grown with all those years. I think that is something one ought to hope for and pray for and work for all during life: to grow, to become not only older but a bigger person. She is old, all right, vieja, but I will dare say this in front of her: she is una anciana¹; with that I declare my respect…” (Coles, 36)

¹ “anciana” is a wisdom figure with the powers of a prophet who can look deep into life, death and events. (Interpretation by Judy Kramer, OSB.)

By Mary Reuter, OSB

Photo by RDNE Stock project on Pexels.