Peter Kreeft was recently on Pints with Aquinas, a few months after his wife died. They got to talking about the death of his wife and his lover for her and his advice to newlyweds or those about to get married. Peter responded:
Do you think that when you are very old, and your wife is very old and ugly, and wrinkled, and fat, and not very bright, or even nasty, that you will still find her beautiful... if so, marry her. The last view I had of my wife in the nursing home about an hour after she died, I fell in love with her again. Here is a wasted, emaciated, wrinkled, suffering body.... it's as beautiful as a crucifix. Because that body ain't gonna last, but the soul is. So if you don't love her soul, but just love her body.... don't get married.
It brought to mind the poem from WB Yeats "When You Are Old":
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
Different ending in the poem, but the love for that Pilgrim soul.
