This conversation is why I always feel obliged to show respect and gratitude to people who do the right thing by the people they love. It's not because I thought they might not rise to the occasion, but because I know that some cannot or do not, and those that do should be honored.

I never had more admiration for a cousin than when he married his childhood sweetheart after they reunited about 3 years ago, just after she had been diagnosed with brain cancer and given a year to live. She moved into his house and they married at the end of the year. She died a month after they got married. True love, man.

I am sitting her slack-jawed. So "in sickness and in health"....

people do realize than unless we are in some freak accident, we most likely will die of disease and sickness, yes?

do these same people plan to abandon their siblings? parents?

I...

I don't think people plan to abandon their loved ones, they just find themselves in the land of not-dealing.

they just find themselves in the land of not-dealing.

Or the town of Someone Else Will Take Care of Things.

I do know of a number of people that walked too. It just isn't imaginable to me. Steve got his diagnosis after we had been married 4 months. It was so much something that happened to us, not to him. What he taught me the next 18 months is beyond measure. I know that my love helped him as profoundly.

When I got sick in December, I still don't remember about a week, but I do remember waking up several times and seeing DH working quietly in a chair on the laptop next to the bed. I have never felt more comforted and loved.

I was just talking to my DH last night about a time shortly before my hysterectomy, when I woke up in the middle of the might and (spoiler-fonted for girly TMI) the sheets on my side were soaked with blood. He woke up and was SO unruffled, even though it was deep at night I kept apologizing for waking him up, but he wouldn't let me, and he got me into the shower. When I got back to bed, he'd changed the sheets and laid out fresh pajamas. He still doesn't see why I think what he did was a big deal.

Before Hubby and I were married but while we were living together, I had an artery in my sinuses burst due to an allergic reaction to mold. He hauled me into the ER four times that night, then nursed me through the two days of recovery from having my sinuses packed and the blood loss. A couple of months later we decided we needed to be married.

Every time Steve would get into the apology routine I would ask him straight out if he would do the same for me. I knew absolutely he would, and he did too. This partnership thing isn't for just the fun times!