Notes on Loving and Being Loved - A Human Tragedy

The first part of this article is an update.  To read the original article written a few weeks after my marriage, skip to the title line below.

Update - 2017.  I wrote this in 2009.  In 2015, in October, my beloved wife Judy Ann Jones-Hubertz caught a cancer, and she died 7 months later.  She died as she lived - bravely, and deeply hurting, but she never would accept or run from pain.

She had a sore hip, and the diagnosis was terminal lung cancer, already spreading through her bones and into her brain.  She had a sore hip.

And she is dead - and I nearly died also.  I accepted this, and gave most of my money to my children, mortgatged my home and ran up all my credit cards.  I got drunk a few times, cried a few times, and waited to die.  

But - I live on, it has been three years, and I lived.  Not through any fault of my own - I tried to die, and was going to kill myself when it snowed here in Northeast Indiana...  it always snows.  

It never snowed.  For two terrible, awful winters, it never snowed in zip code 46806 in Fort Wayne, Indiana.  Look it up.

This spring, I did something I have never in my life done before.  I broke my promise and solemn vow to myself, and decided not to die.  I removed the kerosene heater and the comfortable chair from my tiny closet, and walked out into the world.

My writing was finally finished, the New Hope Church was ready for the world.... not a new faith, but a doctrine of how and why we are alive, and how to live a life of miracles, and save the world....

A doctrine of truth.

And God came to me then, in the Spring, and spoke to me again - the same voice heard by Buddha and Jesus, Abraham and Moses, the voice that has guided my writing since I was just a boy so long ago.

And God said this - "John, Stop Waiting to be Perfect."

This article was lost to the world, but somehow I came across it today.  It took a lot of effort to republish it and add it to the New Hope message.  

John Hubertz, Fort Wayne Indiana, December, 2017

Notes on Loving and Being Loved - 

On June 11th, I lost my Blessed Mother to Dementia at age 92. This was a fairly early death for my family - many of us live to be 100 years old or beyond.  In September I married the hospice lady - a love story.  But, as middle-aged men tend to be "maudlin" (thinking of the past with fond sorrow), tonight over a whiskey sour (a drink), I began to think about Mom, and my new wife, and the future.  

Not always a good idea, but hey - I've shed a tear before and it didn't kill me.  I'm no spring chicken.

Why was I thinking that way?  Well, a few minutes ago I saw an advertisement on my BBC cable channel for a show called Doctor Who - a fictional character who because of the plotline, is a person who will live a very, very long life.

The Doctor Who advertisement got me thinking - he spoke for my Mother in a way....

"To live a long life is a mixed blessing - for you are destined to watch everyone and everything pass away as your life goes on and on."

Tom Hank's character on the movie "The Green Mile" said essentially the same thing - a very touching scene.

My mother lived long - almost all the people she knew, her husband, her daughter (My sister Mary), and hundreds and hundreds of deeply loved people, places, jobs and moments all long past; dead, gone, turned to dust and cherished sadness of sweet memory.

Queen Elizabeth said goodbye to the man who helped raise her (the King was quite busy), her Uncle, and gave a eulogy just a few days after 9/11/2001.  But as the Queen of England she was speaking (as is her duty) not just to family and friends, but to the nation and indeed the world.  The September 11th tragedy made it more meaningful for many of us around the world (many British nationals died at the World Trade Center).

She said then that just as each birth guarantees a death, to choose to live with vigor, to love, not just once and when young but as an ongoing commitment to life is a terrible sacrifice, but a very sweet sorrow.

To Love is to Lose - you cannot cling to this life, all things will pass - it is the condition of the human experience as we walk the river of time through birth, growth, life and eventually, death.

To Love is to Lose. But she said then, and as I strongly believe, that the only path of life, faith and hope is to take the risk, accept the pain and agonizing knowing, and to choose love.

On September 9th I married a wonderful woman - the hospice lady for my Mother, the widow Mrs. Judy A. Jones. I'm an older man... and know only too well my time with her will be limited by fate, health and the relentless ticking of the clock. Here she is - she and I, at our wedding. It is a wonderful, strong and terrible love we share - knowing that the time and season of our years (we are both 50) is well past noon - and our days of life and love will someday come to an ending.

I simply thank God, reality, whatever it is that creates this moment, for giving me the great good fortune to meet her... and to once more and for perhaps the last time, choose love.

John Hubertz, Fort Wayne, Indiana, December 2009.