Last fall, I went back into therapy after stopping for a decade. I am so much better, but I will always have things to talk about. When you are mentally ill, you are recovering all the time but can never fully heal.

The same therapist walked me through my breakdown; we picked it up right where we left off.

I talked about many things, but one day I brought up what was really keeping me up at night. I told her that I woke up many nights worrying about what would happen to Maria if I died.

I live in reality: that time is getting closer.

My therapist interrupted me. “No, Jon,” that’s not what’s keeping you up at night; that’s not what you are anxious about.”

We both were silent as I wanted to hear what she had to say.

“It’s not really that you are worried about her. You are worried about yourself. You are afraid of leaving her. She means so much to you; the idea that you will leave her is frightening to you.”

This was one of those observations and insights that brought me up short. In a sense, this year was a great test of our love.

I had three different surgeries, and each one of them incapacitated me in one way or another, or stripped me of my dignity, and covered me with shame at the way I sometimes was and looked.

Love at my age is more complicated than the love of the young, if not easier. Surgery is a remarkable reminder that I am different, more frail, less attractive, in need of more help.

I have always been prideful and fiercely independent, and surgery can strip that away quicker than a hurricane can pull the bark off of a tree.

On some days this year, I looked in the mirror and could hardly believe that it was me – pale and drawn and exhausted – looking back at me.  Who was this old man in my body?

I spent a lot of time recovering, sometimes reduced to helplessness.

How could this look to Maria? Is this really a place she wants to be?

Could she really love me and want to make love to me when I couldn’t get to the bathroom in time or soiled my clothes for days while I recovered.

Wouldn’t she be repulsed by this? Is this what she bargained for? Is this what she has to look ahead to?

I was wrong.

She was nothing but gentle.

She didn’t seem to notice my mood swings and body swings and painful and difficult recoveries, my fatigue and medications and distractions.  There was no task so unpleasant she didn’t respond to it with love and understanding.

And she was never afraid of telling me she was sick of taking care of me and had to make some art. I loved that.

How do you really love someone when you hurt so much you can barely think? 

I mentioned my worries to her once, and her Sicilian spirit flared up in anger.”Don’t you dare say that to me,” she said. “I love helping you; I love taking care of you when you need me. You are nothing but beautiful to me.”

And this, too, I thought, was the truth. She did love caring care for me, and then she loved moving on and taking care of her art.

I am better now, this year made me stronger and healthier.

It’s not a lack of love that drains marriages, I have learned; it’s a lack of friendship. Maria and I are, above all else, friends as well as lovers.

We became best friends days after we meet, we are best friends still.

No one has ever been closer to me, or will ever be closer to me.

There is nothing we would not do for each other.

Love is a sonnet written by Pablo Neruda:

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.”

Love is a state of mine in which the happiness of another became essential to my own.

I loved learning that she could see me at my absolute worst, stripped of dignity and pride,  I felt I was disgusting at times.

But all she saw was me, our love, and my soul. The rest didn’t matter.

I was loveless for so long that I had no idea what love really was when I met Maria. I am still learning about it. It was something I never had and never expected to have.

For the first time in my life, reality was better than my dreams.

This was what I wanted, what I had been looking for all of my life, what I finally found.

Compassion, I think, is the awareness of a deep bond between myself and another creature – a person particularly, sometimes an animal or a way of life. Love is two sides to the bond.

Real love doesn’t fade or flee; it exists in its own sphere, beyond humans’ petty fears and conventional wisdom.

Maria came together at a time when we were both empty, and we filed one another up. I don’t know if I can say it any more clearly.

Love is about sharing and showing the vulnerability and morality of my physical self. True love transcends the dramas and challenges and pain of real life. It floats above it, an entity all of its own.

It is about selflessness, loving something much bigger than yourself, accepting something other than yourself, supporting and encouraging something other than yourself.

In a few years from now – five years, ten, it doesn’t matter – I will be ashes in a pot, perhaps nothing at all. This is a humbling thought, not a sad one.

More and more, I think about the mortality of my physical form, which is slowly dissolving all the time. But love is a powerful spiritual force, a divine presence that is also moving and deepening.

Past 70, my spirit, my passion grows and deepens, and flowers like a willful Geranium. It is radiant, fully awake, more alive than ever.

Nothing, I believe, that was ever real ever dies. And that is the thing about love, which in some ways has little to do with the physical body.

Love exists in a deathless dimension, is my true nature, the other side of selflessness and compassion.