Love Is Blind

         Most of us have heard people say "Love is blind" at various times in our life.

         One commonly held meaning for those words is that someone in love often doesn't see the "negative things" or the "flaws" in their special person that others may realize are there.



         But love can be "blind" in a way that can help keep the romance, affection, and deep love in a couple's relationship stronger, often over a longer period of time.



         But this same type of "blind" love can have a dark side for some couples.



         Linda had been an epileptic since she was eight years old. We married in August, 1968. Two years after I graduated high school, one year after she graduated. We were both 19. Beginning sometime in late 1978, she slowly began gaining weight. But our love was so deep, and so strong, right from the night we met in March, 1966, that every time I looked at her, all I saw was the beautiful, young, shy, introverted 16-year-old I fell in love with when I was 17, and she was 16.



         At some point, her weight must have changed enough to cause the frequency of her seizures to increase. We had known from the very beginning that her medicine dosages had to be closely tied to her weight. Yet neither one of us recalled that restriction as quickly as we should have, even as we saw the number of seizures slightly increase. Least of all me, since all I could see before me each and every day was that beautiful, young, shy, introverted 16-year-old.



         Had one of us, either one, managed to remember that restriction just a few short months earlier than we finally did, the doctor would have had an earlier start on re-calculating her dosages, and that meant he might have had her dosages re-figured soon enough that the seizure that ultimately, albeit indirectly, took her life would not have happened.



         Yes, love can be, and often is, blind. But do your best to keep any medical issues either you, or that special someone in your life, may have, in a place where you can't forget them if an important need for them turns up. Keep those issues in your mind, and in a place in your residence where you see them in written form, each and every day. Like near your medicine cabinet, or on your refrigerator.



         Don't let those important medical points dominate your life or your relationship. But, equally important, don't let an otherwise deep, meaningful, yet blissfully blind love between you create a situation that takes time away from you both, or worse yet, takes you from each other.