The Greatest of These... (“Love” part I of V)

Posted by Liana at 1:04 PM

Road Trips. Trash the Dress. Grandfather. Death. Love. Reunions. Double-Wedding Weekends. Game Nights. Ogre Prince. New Friends. Caribbean Adventures. For Love or Money? Fever. Crazy, Simple Workflow. Getting Caught Up. Aruba, Jamaica. Boot Camps. Greece. Fires. Lost Money Found. Birthdays. Filming. Passion. Faith. Organize. Empty. Spill.

Words elude what has transpired over the past four months. With all the clutter and being pulled in this direction and that... I’m ever drawn back to one thing in particular... the greatest of all these... LOVE.




Perhaps it was my grandfather’s funeral when my uncle stood up and spoke with heart-wrenching conviction about his life that first sparked this relentless study. How the single most defining thing we could draw from his life is the LOVE he demonstrated.

While my grandmother suffered from a stroke at a very early age, leaving her increasingly immobile over the years, my grandfather exhibited a kind of love that was quiet and steady...sacrificing much for her care. Perhaps his devotion and service to my grandmother was the reason why we never knew him fully... why it was only at his death we fully understood.

A month earlier, my mother and father and I made the trip to Florida to visit him upon his diagnosis. He was given less than six months to live and somehow we knew his time was even shorter. We wheeled his shrunken frame into my grandmother’s room for a visit. She touted stories about how he would come and spray her hair and style it ... he did her hair all these years... I never would have imagined!! A few weeks later, I got a frantic call while I waited in JFK airport to head to the Dominican; my grandfather was on his death-bed and everyone was calling to say their goodbyes. Panic. Acceptance. False alarm. He would have two more weeks and a few more bouts of clarity before passing to a better place.

In the busiest work month of the year, I joined my family at the funeral. My grown cousins and I sobbed behind our row of parents then later toasted up in the apartment, celebrating his life at the informal sort of reunion it was becoming. It was in this apartment that our search through their past began, our discoveries unveiling their love story.

to be continued....