I met George and Vi in 1973. They were teaching on marriage during a Wednesday night service. I had walked with Jesus for about 2 years, but despite my youth, I was duly impressed. As you will see from some of the quotes, Vi has suffered from memory loss for a long time.
My wife was stricken with a rare disease (Capgras) in 2020. In this disease, the wife (or husband) doesn’t recognize their spouse – and only their spouse. It is sometimes called Spousal Replacement Syndrome. I discovered a journal article that proposed a possible reason the wife has a problem recognizing only the husband. Facial recognition in the case of a loved one is augmented with an emotional reaction that can be measured by the skin temperature. You “get a charge” out of seeing your loved one. Some with Capgras do not exhibit that temperature rise when shown a picture of their loved one. This told the researchers that the emotional connections in the brain had broken down (my wife also has white matter disease – which is the connecting matter in the brain).
I decided I would do everything in my power to re-map her brain’s emotional network. One of the ways I did this was with George’s poems. I would leave excerpts from his beautiful words around the house and on mirrors. After a year of this and other things, my dear one no longer exhibited Capgras. Since recovery is very rare, I attribute it to the new neural connections we made in part thanks to George’s poetry. I am forever grateful to God and to George for that.
It not only allowed me to be me again with her – it did wonders for our relationship. After 50 years, we are more in love than ever. BUY the BOOK and read some of the words to your spouse.
I hope you enjoy these excerpts:
My wife and I met online in 1973. How is that possible? Over a telephone line. This poem made me realize that God spoke to me: “This is she” at that moment.
Love settled on the smile across the room
And said: This is she. You shall cherish her
All your years: her radiance today,
Her beauty in the middle passage, her loveliness
In age. She is yours to keep and hold.
Her smile is like a leaf in morning sun,
Her laughter like water burbling over stones;
Her heart is glass, transparent; her will
A compass, fixed to do the bidding of her Lord.
Cherish her, she is woman, she is yours.
You must endure the strain of time.
Each trial Will be occasion for your love to grow.
This woman is my gift, says God.
Take her as wife. In her beauty lies the mirror of eternal life.
I really can identify with this fragment:
In her beauty lies the mirror of eternal life.
My wife has beautiful blue eyes. The eye doctor confirmed it yesterday. According to him, only Paul Neuman’s exceed them in their beauty. And yet, it was two years into our marriage before I recognized them.
How is it I scarcely saw you
All those years ago?
What cataracts filmed my eyes
Every morning when she awakes, the first thing I wait for is that smile that “sets my day apart.”
How could my whole soul and body fail to exult
At the kindness in your hazelnut eyes
And the smile playing on your face,
Warm, mischievous and gentle,
Yes! True passion is nourished through slow growth:
How vain from our years’ hilltop
To regret my failure to know you
With my whole soul and body
When we were still young.
What counts is our faithfulness
And the slow growth of love:
So is true passion nourished.
Yes! To have the strength of youth with the depth of our age:
How I would our youth were ours again—
Ours in our age!
For our passion is richer now than then,
Our intimacy truer.
My love for Barbara seems so shallow now when I look back at it, but this snippet describes it now:
Our roots have gone deeper
Into love’s loamy soil.
I love the image of our marriage going from a house to an inn. Not a home as just a cozy nest, but a welcoming presence:
Picture of my old soul
As it was when we met,
Before you and my Lord
Assaulted and captured my stronghold,
Set up house within its walls,
Refurbished it slowly,
And made it an inn.
Oh, yes, I give thanks!
I shall sing thanks to heaven,
And to you speak it sweetly—
Any veil left between us
By grace of God, you’ve held, do hold me fast—
You, my love, have brought me into your glad home at last.
Barbara is the only one whom I ever heard God say to (and it was really Him): “You are good, my daughter.” And that goodness is setting me free.
And as we age, your presence, like perfume,
Makes my life sweet, your goodness sets me free
There is a part of married love that is all-pervasive:
Love, you’re all about me.
Everywhere I see your hand and eye.
Your strong heart beats
In every corner of the empty house; your care
Covers every object my dull gaze meets.
I experience beauty so much more powerfully when I have shared it with Barbara:
Beauty unshared holds no intrinsic thrill.
The world is love’s work, God’s work:
I know more of what George is talking about here since Barbara’s illness:
In this silence we commune.
Now we say more
Than words speak.
Yet we need words to draw out
All the love our hearts contain.
But you and I are called to peace.
We vow Love in the silence of our hearts.
Even now, this is true. Always fragile before. Now more so. But Oh what strength! And I love the way Barbara laughs at my jokes:
You are fragility itself.
Yet what strength!
What womanhood!
The sun in your hair,
A wave of light!
Your smile is very joy putting out its sign:
“Laughter is what we do here: welcome!”
Eyes of Love
When I behold you with the eyes of love,
I see God’s radiance in your lovely face.
In your eyes shines pure light from high above
Our realm, where earth’s cloistered pastures give place
To open range, everlasting, boundless.
Of that realm, in your eyes’ depths, I see the gleam,
Like a spark echoing the fire in the furnace
Of a distant star, as in a vivid dream
One might experience the wild glory
Of divinity unleashed. That gleam tells
Of your great Maker, speaks the story
Of His profligate love drawn from the wells
Of His primordial Life. In your lovely face
God’s love is mirrored, figuring His grace.
The Smile
At her mouth’s edge a smile dawns.
Like sunlight through broken
Clouds gliding on a grassy hill,
It moves across her lips silently,
Even as her mind’s motions
Recall a joke, a jest, a shared intimacy,
And pull up into light
A forgotten thread from our love.
Her lips part,
Sun floods the hill,
The smile breaks over her face like a wave—
She laughs.
Her eyes flash like pools on the hillside,
Her heart erupts—
And for a moment there is no time,
Time has gone over the hill,
It has vanished.
There is only now,
Eternity.
Joy
…
But how shall I, poor aging soul,
Show love befitting her
To my sweet mate
(For love, to be true,
Must fit the object loved
And be not just the subject’s wish)?
How shall I,
Who so fear loss,
Resist my fear of what must someday come?
“By loving,” says my Lord.
“One loves today,
Not yesterday, not the day to come.
Love is in the things you see
And in your gestures,
Your gentle gestures.
Has My Sun Set?
Oh, I’ve uttered fervent prayers, my God!
I’ve shot them like pellets, blown them like bubbles,
Shaken them at you as I might shake a rod.
Day and night, Lord, I’ve poured out all my troubles.
Anguished, I’ve cried to you for my beloved wife:
God, breathe on the still-hot embers of her mind!
Rekindle in those coals the fire of life!
Bring mental light again where she’s gone blind!
You’ve heard me, Lord, I know that.
Your ears Have not been closed, nor your heart.
Yet, No answer comes.
Despite my faith, fears
Claw at me. I grow cold.
Has my sun set?
For my dear wife is like the sun to me.
Have mercy, Lord—set Victoria free!