Loving the Unlovely

We often talk about love as if it is something beyond our comprehension. Something divine or ethereal that cannot be touched or seen. We talk about it in hushed tones or scream about it, but usually when it feels distant. When we feel it slipping away.

Love is the most natural thing in the world. It is abundant; the only true renewable resource. It's woven into the fibres of our muscles, it crackles through the ridges of our brains and sits on our skin like perfume. It comes so easily, which is why its absence feels like a death; why we baulk like skittish horses when we see the end barrelling down the tracks.

You are dying; I see it in you. I can see you wither, and I love every line on your face. I can hear the rattle in your breathing, the wheeze at the end of words, and I know that I will have to live long without you. Each shaking gesture is precious. Infirmity is not a sin, not in its own self and not as an experience. It is not something committed against you, nor a flaw in you. It is a loss, however.

The loss of You. The you that looks and sounds like you.

I loved you when you were lovely. When you wore green and had dirt under your nails and tulip bulbs in your pockets and you smelled like grass and your hair was wild from the wind. I loved you when your fine, slim hands were quick and nimble. When your eyes were bright and your teeth were strong. I loved you when you held my hands and washed my face and brushed my hair. When you had long nails that scratched my scalp and cake batter on your arm.

That you slipped away by increments until she was gone, but I love you. The new You. I love your unloveliness because it is natural to me... and selfish. I love your sharp eyes, though they have sunk, because they are alive. I love your frail hands and your curved spine because they are firm and real. I love to hold your hand and hug you gently; I love that you are perfectly unlovely. Bent and wrinkled and still sharp as a knife with glittering eyes. I love the pain of living with this change because it's mine. And yours. And I will count it out, day by day, like a miser counting coins because life will be so long. A day will come when I have to love the space you leave behind, when I cannot sit at your feet and coax you to eat a little more of the cake I brought, the fudge I bought, the porridge you love. Because it will be natural for me to do so, and I will have no choice.

I will love you if you smell of sickness, when you grow smaller still. I will love you threadbare and scared, though I hope you never fear, and I will keep a light on for you. All my days there will be a candle in my home and tulips in my garden, and dirt beneath my nails for you. Even when it hurts; especially then, because that's when it matters most.

We treat love as if it is inhuman, or more than human, and shun it when it rips and tears as if it has no right to teeth and claw. But it's not; it's natural, and nature can be brutal. Every thing on this earth has the right to be unlovely, to be dangerous... even you. Even love.

So I have a promise for you; I will love the unlovely scars that form like hieroglyphs when you leave, and add to them as I become perfectly unlovely too. And hope (another natural and brutal thing) that when I too become infirm, or sick, someone will love me as naturally and brutally as I love you.