I walked into Wal-Mart on December 28^th for my first after Christmas visit. I usually don’t go in that early, but I needed to pick up a prescription. What greeted my eyes was surprising.

          A rather large display for Valentine’s Day.

          It is a personal opinion that if stores didn’t go all crazy for special days, they wouldn’t be celebrated the way they are celebrated. Valentine’s Day, Easter, Sweetest Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Halloween and Christmas. “Tell her you love her this Valentine’s Day with a diamond.” Really? The only way my wife is going to know I love her is if I buy her a diamond? Commercials for Easter center on candies, principally the Cadbury Eggs. Sweetest Day is the ‘later in the year’ Valentine’s. Mother’s Day commercials aren’t aimed at kids urging them to buy a new coffee mug for Mom. They are aimed at Dad’s urging us to buy something expensive to show her you are glad she is the mother of your children. Father’s Day commercials are nothing more than an attempt to sell power tools. Halloween is rejoicing day for Hershey and Nestle. And, of course, Christmas is everything. Just buy it while supplies last!

          Imagine these holidays if there were no commercials. A husband quietly taking his wife out to eat without the kids for Valentine’s Day. Easter morning spent in church with kids not hyped up on sugar. Sweetest Day wouldn’t exist. Mother’s Day and Father’s Day would celebrate parents instead of spending. Halloween would be trick or treating with some candy, but apples, too. And Christmas wouldn’t seem to last forever and would not put people deeper into debt.

          Back to Valentine’s Day. The ministry has allowed me to see love from many angles. As a counselor, I have seen people struggle with love. Maybe it is a parent/child relationship. Sometimes the teenage years can cause a parent to question their love for their child and a child to question their love for the parents. It usually works out in the end, but it can be dicey for a while. Husbands and wives often come to odds. Mistakes are made, misunderstandings are everywhere, someone feels unappreciated. Often, the two adults act like children and the marriage comes apart. For some reason, parents will come for counseling almost immediately when their kids are giving them trouble but when it is an issue between the spouses, they tend to wait till hope is gone. Very frustrating. Love can be a hard way to go.

          There is another side of love. That is the grief side. For nine years the ministry had me doing ministry with a funeral home. In that capacity I saw the desperation and pain that the loss of a loved one can bring. Parents losing a child. Children losing parents. Spouses losing spouses. These were things I dealt with while pastoring, but for those nine years I was immersed in the part of love that entailed loss.

          During those nine years, however, I found the truest expressions of love. Nothing at all like the commercials tells you how to express love. I watched a Mom watching the funeral director start to get ready to close the casket of her teenaged son. She stepped up to the director and said, “Is it OK if I watch?” He looked at her out of the corner of his eye and said, “No. You can’t watch. But you can help.” He quietly talked her through adjusting the son’s clothes, pulling the afghan up just so, tucking everything into the casket that needed tucking in. He allowed her that time to be a mommy one more time. All three of us stood there in tears. Once a young mother wanted to hold her baby one last time. I lifted the baby from the tiny casket and placed the child in the mother’s arms, then led her to a rocker. The mother rocked that baby for twenty minutes, then was finally able to give her back to me. So many instances of so much grief giving over to so much love.

          Then, there was the couple who had been married over 60 years. What happened with this was, for me, the purest expression of love I ever saw between a man and a woman.

          The town our funeral home was in was Madison, Ohio. The next town to the west was Perry, Ohio, the town I grew up in. The next town to the east was Geneva, Ohio, the town I had pastored in for eleven years. It occasionally happened that someone would pass that I had known forever or for whom I had been their pastor. Sometimes those families would want me to take care of their loved one’s body. I was not a mortician, so I couldn’t embalm, but I did become fairly proficient with the other aspects of preparation. I had known this couple that had been married for over 60 years almost my whole life. The wife had been a friend of my mother. Really good, Christian folks. When her husband passed, she wanted me to do as much of the preparation as I could.

            She brought me the clothes she wanted him buried in and she brought their wedding picture. In the picture she was a beautiful young woman and he was a dashing, slender young man. He had gained a lot of weight during the marriage and it was interesting to see him as that young fellow.

          She then gave me the clothes. “Larry, you know Doug never, ever wore a suit. The only time he ever wore a suit was when we got married. This is that suit. I want him to buried in his suit.” If it had been someone I hadn’t known, I might have pointed out that getting him into that suit might be hard. After all, clothes do age and seams become weak. I could have given her a true reason to try and talk her out of him wearing that suit. But, she was my mother’s friend. Her son and I had played on the same football team. I just smiled and told her I would do the best I could.

          The fact is, at a funeral home we can make most anything fit. It might have to be cut and then fitted to the individual, but we can do it. In this case, though, he was a lot larger than the suit. By the time I was done with it all and had him in the casket and dressed, I just felt it looked rough. No one could have done it better. The owner of the home came and looked and said it was the best that could be done. It just was not possible to make that suit look like it fit. It was just too small and he was just too large. I was so disappointed in my efforts and I knew that this dear, dear wife would not be pleased.

          She came in and I walked with her to the casket. She stepped up and looked in. She caught her breath and then she began to cry. She stared at him for several seconds, then she turned to me and took me into her arms. “Oh, Larry! He looks just like he did the day we were married!”

          Real love is blind. Real love transcends earthly knowledge. Real love never goes away.

          Just as an addition to the story; when they were married all she got was a simple gold band. They were starting out, the diamond would have to come later. It never did, though. She never needed that diamond to know he loved her.