Always and Always

By Bob Perks

His soft voice floated out the door and down the hallway. If it were possible you might see wings of angels attached to every note. He wasn't the finest singer in the world, but his words of love needed only his personal interpretation.

I had been visiting a friend at the hospital when I was introduced to this wonderful man. No, not in person. But I got to know who he was through his singing.

You see every evening right before they made the announcement that visiting hours were over, this wonderful gentleman would sing to his wife.

"I'll be loving you always. With a love that's true always," he sang with a slight warble in his voice.

"Every night that I've been here, I've heard him sing that song," my friend told me. "In fact, if you notice this wing of the hospital suddenly becomes quiet at the first sound of his voice. You know how noisy hospitals can be."

"What do you know about him?" I asked.

"Nothing much. There are rumors floating around that contradict each other--that he's wealthy, that he has nothing. I do know that he's up in years, around 80, they say," he told me.

"I'd love to meet him," I said.

"I don't think visitors are permitted in that room. When I get up and walk down the hall for my daily therapy, I walk over there on purpose. Looking in, I always see the curtain pulled around," he replied. "But I'll find out what I can for you. I know how you love stories like this."

I decided to return the next night just to hear him sing again. Well, I told my friend I was really there to see him. But he would understand anyway.

Once again like clockwork, just minutes before the announcement, the singing began. It was the oddest thing. You could sense that the old gentleman was about to sing because the place quieted down in anticipation.

"I'll be loving you always. With a love that's true always. When the things you plan need a helping hand, I will understand always, oh always..."

When he'd finished and the hustle and noise of the hospital picked up, I turned to my friend and said, "It's wonderful that he comes every day to sing to his wife."

"Bob, I thought I told you. He's not visiting there. He's a patient," my friend said.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I misunderstood. His wife is visiting him. Maybe if I hurry I catch her when she leaves. I would really love to speak with her,"

"Bob, that would be impossible. I did a little research today. You'll love this one. He's all alone down there. He sings that song for his wife who is in a nursing home. Their children live out west somewhere. She can't come to visit him. She is in an acute-care section where she is monitored all the time. She can't even talk much, so the staff where she is arranges the phone call. They visit over the phone a few minutes each night and he always ends it the same way--singing to her," he said.

"How incredible!"

We said our goodbyes, and I hurried toward the old man's room. The announcement came ending visiting hours, and one by one people started exiting the rooms. This room was near the end of the hallway. Like a little kid not wanting to be caught, I tiptoed past the nurses' station and stood looking out the window as if I were waiting for someone.

I turned and started walking toward his room, and suddenly a nurse came out.

"I'm caught!" I thought to myself. But she never looked my way. I walked up to the door, and there he was, standing with the help of a walker and looking out the window. With his back to me, he didn't see me there. I was about to make a comment in hopes that I could meet this wonderful man, when he suddenly raised his hand as if waving to someone out the window.

"Sweet dreams, my love," he said. "Sleep well, my angel. It won't be long until we are finally together for eternity. Always and always."

I couldn't say a word. I turned and left.

My friend was released from the hospital so I have not had the opportunity or reason to return. But I know in my heart that the two lovers will be fine, no matter what happens.

Because they have a love that will last "not for just an hour, not for just a day, not for just a year, but always."

Roses For Mum

by: C.W. McCall, Source Unknown

A man stopped at a flower shop to order some flowers to be wired to his mother who lived two hundred miles away. As he got out of his car he noticed a young girl sitting on the curb sobbing. He asked her what was wrong and she replied, "I wanted to buy a red rose for my mother. But I only have seventy-five cents, and a rose costs two dollars."

The man smiled and said, "Come on in with me. I'll buy you a rose." He bought the little girl her rose and ordered his own mother's flowers. As they were leaving he offered the girl a ride home. She said, "Yes, please! You can take me to my mother."

She directed him to a cemetery, where she placed the rose on a freshly dug grave.

The man returned to the flower shop, cancelled the wire order, picked up a bouquet and drove the two hundred miles to his mother's house.

The Mountain

There were two warring tribes in the Andes, one that lived in the lowlands and the other high in the mountains. The mountain people invaded the lowlanders one day, and as part of their plundering of the people, they kidnapped a baby of one of the lowlander families and took the infant with them back up into the mountains.
The lowlanders didn't know how to climb the mountain. They didn't know any of the trails that the mountain people used, and they didn't know where to find the mountain people or how to track them in the steep terrain.
Even so, they sent out their best party of fighting men to climb the mountain and bring the baby home.
The men tried first one method of climbing and then another. They tried one trail and then another. After several days of effort, however, they had climbed only several hundred feet.
Feeling hopeless and helpless, the lowlander men decided that the cause was lost, and they prepared to return to their village below.
As they were packing their gear for the descent, they saw the baby's mother walking toward them. They realized that she was coming down the mountain that they hadn't figured out how to climb.
And then they saw that she had the baby strapped to her back. How could that be?
One man greeted her and said, "We couldn't climb this mountain. How did you do this when we, the strongest and most able men in the village, couldn't do it?"
She shrugged her shoulders and said, "It wasn't your baby."

50 Romantic Things For Your Love

1. Watch the sunset together.
2. Whisper to each other.
3. Cook for each other.
4. Walk in the rain.
5. Hold hands.
6. Buy gifts for each other.
7. Roses.
8. Find out their favorite cologne/perfume and wear it every time you're together.
9. Go for a long walk down the beach at midnight.
10. Write poetry for each other.
11. Hugs are the universal medicine.
12. Say I love you, only when you mean it and make they know you mean it.
13. Give random gifts of flowers/candy/poetry etc.
14. Tell her that she's the only girl you ever want. Don't lie.
15. Spend every second possible together.
16. Look into each others eyes.
17. Very lightly push up her chin, look into her eyes, tell her you love her, and kiss her lightly.
18. When in public, only flirt w/ each other.
19. Put love notes in their pockets when they aren't looking.
20. Buy her a ring.
21. Sing to each other.
22. Always hold her around her hips/sides.
23. Take her to dinner and do the dinner for two deal.
24. Spaghetti (Ever see Lady and the Tramp?)2
5. Hold her hand, stare into her eyes, kiss her hand and then put it over your heart.
26. Dance together.
27. I love the way a girl looks right after shes fallen asleep with her head in my lap.
28. Do cute things like write I love you in a note so that they have to look in a mirror to read it.
29. Make excuses to call them every 5 minutes
30. Even if you are really busy doing something, go out of your way to call and say I love you.
31. Call from your vacation spot to tell them you were thinking about them.
32. Remember your dreams and tell her about them.
34. Tell each other your most sacred secrets/fears.
35. Be Prince Charming to her parents. (Brownie Points)
36. Brush her hair out of her face for her.
37. Hang out with his/her friends. (more brownie points)
38. Go to church/pray/worship together.
39. Take her to see a romantic movie and remember the parts she liked.
40. Learn from each other and don't make the same mistake twice.
41. Describe the joy you feel just to be with him/her.
42. Make sacrifices for each other.
43. Really love each other, or don't stay together.
44. Let there never be a second during any given day that you aren't thinking about them, and make sure they know it.
45. Love yourself before you love anyone else.
46. Learn to say sweet things in foreign languages.
47. Dedicate songs to them on the radio.
48. Fall asleep on the phone with each other.
49. Stand up for them when someone talks trash.
50. Never forget the kiss goodnight. And always remember to say, "Sweet dreams."

If You Love Her Enough

by: Bill Walls, Source Unknown

My friend John always has something to tell me. He knows so much that young men have to have older and more worldly wise men to tell them. For instance who to trust, how to care for others, and how to live life to the fullest.
Recently, John lost his wife Janet. For eight years she fought against cancer, but in the end her sickness had the last word.
One day John took out a folded piece of paper from his wallet. He had found it, so he told me, when he tidied up some drawers at home. It was a small love letter Janet had written. The note could look like a school girl's scrawls about her dream guy. All that was missing was a drawing of a heart with the names John and Janet written in it. But the small letter was written by a woman who had had seven children; a woman who fought for her life and who probably only had a few months left to live.
It was also a beautiful recipe for how to keep a marriage together.
Janet's description of her husband begins thus: "Loved me. Took care of me. Worried about me."
Even though John always had a ready answer, he never joked about cancer apparently. Sometimes he came home in the evening to find Janet in the middle of one of those depressions cancer patients so often get. In no time he got her into the car and drove her to her favourite restaurant.
He showed consideration for her, and she knew it. You cannot hide something for someone who knows better.
"Helped me when I was ill," the next line reads. Perhaps Janet wrote this while the cancer was in one of the horrible and wonderful lulls. Where everything is -- almost -- as it used to be, before the sickness broke out, and where it doesn't hurt to hope that everything is over, maybe forever.
"Forgave me a lot."
"Stood by my side."
And a piece of good advice for everyone who looks on giving constructive criticism as a kind of sacred duty: "Always praising."
"Made sure I had everything I needed," she goes on to write.
After that she has turned over the paper and added: "Warmth. Humour. Kindness. Thougtfulness." And then she writes about the husband she has lived with and loved the most of her life: "Always there for me when I needed you."
The last words she wrote sum up all the others. I can see her for me whe she adds thoughtfully: "Good friend."
I stand beside John now, and cannot even pretend to know how it feels to lose someone who is as close to me as Janet was to him. I need to hear what he has to say much more than he needs to talk.
"John," I ask. "How do you stick together with someone through 38 years -- not to mention the sickness? How do I know if I can bear to stand by my wife's side if she becomes sick one day?"
"You can," he says quietly. "If you love her enough, you can."

Scorpion

by: Bill Greer, Chicken Soup for the Veteran's Soul

There was this Hindu who saw a scorpion floundering around in the water. He decided to save it by stretching out his finger, but the scorpion stung him. The man still tried to get the scorpion out of the water, but the scorpion stung him again.
A man nearby told him to stop saving the scorpion that kept stinging him.
But the Hindu said: "It is the nature of the scorpion to sting. It is my nature to love. Why should I give up my nature to love just because it is the nature of the scorpion to sting?"

Don't give up loving.
Don't give up your goodness.
Even if people around you sting.

What He Would Have LIked The Most

When Lou Little was coaching football at Georgetown, he had a playerwho was definitely third rate but had so much spirit he was an inspiration to the team. He rarely saw action except in the last few minutes of a game that was already decided.
One day news came that the boy's father had died. The youngster cameto Little and said: "Coach, I want to ask something of you that means an awful lot to me. I want to start the game against Fordham. I think that's what my father would have liked most."
Little hesitated a moment, then said, "Okay son, you'll start, but you'll only be in a play or two. You aren't quite good enough and you know it."
The boy started the game and played so well Little never took him out.His play inspired the team to victory.
Back in the locker room Coach Little embraced the young man andsaid: "Son, you were terrific. You never played that way before...what got into you?"
The boy answered, "Remember how my father and I used to walk around arm-in-arm? There was something about him very few people knew. He was totally blind. This afternoon was the firsttime my father ever saw me play."
-- Bits & Pieces

Courage

A true story of love and courage.

Walking down a path through some woods in Georgia in 1977,I saw a water puddle ahead on the path. I angled my directionto go around it on the part of the path that wasn't covered bywater and mud. As I reached the puddle, I was suddenly attacked!
Yet, I did nothing, for the attack was so unpredictable andfrom a source so totally unexpected. I was startled as well as unhurt,despite having been struck four or five times already. I backed upa foot and my attacker stopped attacking me. Instead of attackingmore, he hovered in the air on graceful butterfly wings in front of me.
Had I been hurt I wouldn't have found it amusing, but I was unhurt,it was funny, and I was laughing. After all, I was being attacked by abutterfly!
Having stopped laughing, I took a step forward. My attackerrushed me again. He rammed me in the chest with his head and body,striking me over and over again with all his might, still to no avail.For a second time, I retreated a step while my attacker relented in hisattack. Yet again, I tried moving forward. My attacker charged meagain. I was rammed in the chest over and over again. I wasn't surewhat to do, other than to retreat a third time. After all, it's justnot everyday that one is attacked by a butterfly. This time, though,I stepped back several paces to look the situation over. My attackermoved back as well to land on the ground. That's when I discoveredwhy my attacker was charging me only moments earlier.
He had a mate and she was dying. She was beside the puddlewhere he landed. Sitting close beside her, he opened and closed hiswings as if to fan her. I could only admire the love and courage ofthat butterfly in his concern for his mate. He had taken it uponhimself to attack me for his mate's sake, even though she was clearlydying and I was so large. He did so just to give her those extra fewprecious moments of life, should I have been careless enough to stepon her.
Now I knew why and what he was fighting for. There was reallyonly one option left for me. I carefully made my way around the puddleto the other side of the path, though it was only inches wide andextremely muddy. His courage in attacking something thousands oftimes larger and heavier than himself just for his mate's safetyjustified it. I couldn't do anything other than reward him bywalking on the more difficult side of the puddle. He had truly earnedthose moments to be with her, undisturbed. I left them in peace for thoselast few moments, cleaning the mud from my boots when I laterreached my car.
Since then, I've always tried to remember the courage of thatbutterfly whenever I see huge obstacles facing me. I use thatbutterfly's courage as an inspiration and to remind myself that goodthings are worth fighting for.

Now And Beyond

On the day after Jack Benny's death in December, 1974, a single long stemmed red rose was delivered to Mary Livingstone Benny, his wife of 48 years.
When the blossoms continued to arrive, day after day, Mary called the florist to find out who sent them.
"Quite a while before Jack passed away," the florist told her, "He stopped in to send a bouquet. As he was leaving, he suddenly turned back and said, "If anything should happen to me, I want you to send Mary a single rose every day."
There was complete silence on Mary's end of the line, then weeping, she said, "Goodbye." Subsequently, Mary learned that Jack had actually included a provision for the flowers in his will, one perfect red rose daily for the rest of her life.

HERO

In the wake of Chicago's worst ever winter, when all of the rooftops were loaded, many overloaded with snow....
Robert McGrath saw his wife run out to the backyard garage to fetch some boxes.
Seconds later he heard the crash!
Looking out he saw the roof of the garage had caved in. McGrath did not stop for hat or coat... He ran from the house, grabbed a snowshovel, and called out for neighbors to help.
Yelling and digging, with sweat freezing on his face -- throwing snow and pulling away boards -- he heard her voice and then saw her hand. He kept digging, throwing and pulling....
And within minutes he had his wife in his arms and was sobbing,"Are you all right? Are you all right? I thought you were hurt.Oh baby, I love you so much!"
She was fine.
What Robert McGrath did NOT know was this:
Mrs. McGrath had gone into the garage through one door and out through another. She was safe in the house when she looked out and saw her husband digging and shouting orders and throwingplanks of wood, feverishly trying to rescue her. She could not let her gallant rescuer down.
So she put her coat on again and went outside and quietly entered thegarage through the back door -- and allowed her husband to be her hero.
-- Paul Harvey, For What It's Worth

My Daddy

Her hair was up in a ponytail,
Her favourite dress tied with a bow.
Today was Daddy's Day at school,
And she couldn't wait to go.

But her Mommy tried to tell her,
That she probably should stay home.
Why the kids might not understand,
If she went to school alone.

But she was not afraid;
She knew just what to say.
What to tell her classmates
Of why he wasn't there today.

But still her mother worried,
For her to face this day alone.
And that was why once again,
She tried to keep her daughter home.

But the little girl went to school,
Eager to tell them all.
About a dad she never sees
A dad who never calls.

There were daddies along the wall in back,
For everyone to meet.
Children squirming impatiently,
Anxious in their seats.

One by one the teacher called,
A student from the class.
To introduce their daddy,
As seconds slowly passed.

At last the teacher called her name,
Every child turned to stare.
Each of them was searching,
For a man who wasn't there.

"Where's her daddy at?"
She heard a boy call out.
"She probably doesn't have one,"
Another student dared to shout.

And from somewhere near the back,
She heard a daddy say,
"Looks like another deadbeat dad,
Too busy to waste his day."

The words did not offend her,
As she smiled up at her Mom.
And looked back at her teacher,
Who told her to go on.

And with hands behind her back,
Slowly she began to speak.
And out from the mouth of a child,
Came words incredibly unique.

"My Daddy couldn't be here,
Because he lives so far away.
But I know he wishes he could be,
Since this is such a special day.

And though you cannot meet him,
I wanted you to know.
All about my daddy,
And how much he loves me so.

He loved to tell me stories
He taught me to ride my bike.
He surprised me with pink roses,
And taught me to fly a kite.

We used to share fudge sundaes,
And ice cream in a cone.
And though you cannot see him,
I'm not standing here alone.

"Cause my daddy's always with me,
Even though we are apart
I know because he told me,
He'll forever be in my heart"

With that, her little hand reached up,
And lay across her chest.
Feeling her own heartbeat,
Beneath her favourite dress.

And from somewhere in the crowd of dads,
Her mother stood in tears.
Proudly watching her daughter,
Who was wise beyond her years.

For she stood up for the love
Of a man not in her life.
Doing what was best for her,
Doing what was right.


And when she dropped her hand back down,
Staring straight into the crowd.
She finished with a voice so soft,
But its message clear and loud.

"I love my daddy very much,
He's my shining star.
And if he could, he'd be here,
But heaven's just too far.

You see he was a fireman
And died just this past year
When airplanes hit the towers
And taught Americans to fear.

But sometimes when I close my eyes,
It's like he never went away."
And then she closed her eyes,
And saw him there that day.

And to her mother's amazement,
She witnessed with surprise.
A room full of daddies and children,
All starting to close their eyes.

Who knows what they saw before them,
Who knows what they felt inside.
Perhaps for merely a second,
They saw him at her side.

"I know you're with me Daddy,"
To the silence she called out.
And what happened next made believers,
Of those once filled with doubt.

Not one in that room could explain it,
For each of their eyes had been closed.
But there on the desk beside her,
Was a fragrant long-stemmed pink rose.

And a child was blessed, if only for a moment,
By the love of her shining bright star.
And given the gift of believing,
That heaven is never too far

They say it takes a minute to find a special person, an hour to appreciate them, a day to love them, but then an entire life to forget them.

The Christmas Shoes

I was not able to watch the movie, but the book made me cry. Definitely one of my most favorite stories of all time...

It was almost Christmas time,
there I stood in another line.
Tryin' to buy that last gift or two,
not really in the Christmas mood.
Standing right in front of me,
was a little boy waiting anxiously.
Pacing 'round like little boys do.
And in his hands he held a pair of shoes...

His clothes were worn and old,
he was dirty from head to toe.
And when it came his time to pay,
I couldn't believe what I heard him say.

Sir, I want to buy these shoes,
for my Mama, please...
It's Christmas Eve...
and these shoes are just her size...
Could you hurry, Sir,
Daddy says there's not much time...
You see she's been sick for quite a while...
And I know these shoes,
would make her smile.
And I want her to look beautiful,
if Mama meets Jesus tonight...

He counted pennies
for what seemed like years
Then the cashier said,
"Son, there's not enough here"
He searched his pockets frantically.
Then he turned and he looked at me...
He said Mama made Christmas good at our house.
Though most years she just did without.
Tell me Sir, what am I going to do,
Somehow I've got to buy her
these Christmas shoes.

So I laid the money down,
I just had to help him out...
I'll never forget the look on his face,
when he said...
Mama's gonna look so great...

Sir, I want to buy these shoes,
for my Mama, please...
It's Christmas Eve...
and these shoes are just her size.
Could you hurry, Sir,
Daddy says there's not much time...
You see she's been sick for quite a while.
And I know these shoes,
would make her smile.
And I want her to look beautiful,
if Mama meets Jesus tonight...

I knew I'd caught a glimpse of heaven's love
As he thanked me and ran out
I knew that God had sent that little boy
To remind me just what Christmas is all about...