CEBU, Philippines - Towards the end of last month she had to be confined in the Chong Hua Hospital for a major surgical operation. Her gall bladder had to be removed on account of stones building up inside it. The medical term for it is cholelithotomy, cholecystectomy. We now have something in common - both of us no longer have any gall bladder. I underwent the same surgical operation in 1987, at the Cebu Velez General Hospital.
In the past, she was hospitalized for amoebiasis and tendonitis. I was also confined in the hospital twice: for heart ailment and for gout. It was during those trying times that we experienced our need for each other. And Yahweh God blessed us for we had jobs whereby we could shoulder the hospital expenses incurred.
Being the eldest in a family of six children, she enjoyed her parents' undivided affection, attention and tender loving care until the next child, a sister, was born. However, she also had her share of life's bitterest bitter because that sister drowned while crossing the river near their house due to a flash flood just four months prior to her graduation from college.
Her father died when the private jeep he was driving was rammed by a big passenger bus heading south of Cebu. With him was a younger brother who had to be brought to the hospital due to serious physical injuries. Another brother, the youngest in the family and a fresh college graduate, died in Mindanao from an unknown illness. The other two younger sisters were hospitalized when the tricycle they were in on their way to school turned turtle.
It was when I visited her sisters in the hospital that my love for my wife sprouted. That's the answer to the question: Where do I begin to tell the story of how great my love towards my wife can be? Another song comes to my mind: "Love comes from the most unexpected places." Indeed, God's ways are wonderful!
Now that we have been married for more than 35 years (by the way, I got married at age 40 and she was only 27), I shared with her what I came across in the book, "Streams in the Desert" by L.B. Cowman by (1997): "Today's tragedies that darken and dampen the presence of heaven for us take their proper place in God's great plan for us - a plan so overwhelmingly magnificent and joyful that we will laugh with wonder and delight!" My wife's woes are also mine, especially when our children do not come up to our high and noble expectations. In this connection, we find solace in Kahlil Gibran's writings:
"Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of life's longing for itself. And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
"You may give them your love, but not your thoughts for they have their own thoughts.
"You may house their bodies but not their souls for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
"You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you for life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
"You are the bows from which your children as arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
"Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness for even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable."
My wife's name is Rosenda Nacua dela Calzada. The first syllable of her first name reminds me of the Spanish saying, "No hay rosas sin espinas," meaning "There are no roses without thorns." We have been together for three decades and a half and have been sharing life's bitterest bitter as well as its sweetest sweet. And that saying just quoted is very applicable to the state of being married.