The holiest labor

Love's austere and lonely offices

Typically I would send out a round-up of other’s “holy labor” today. Good books or essays, thoughtful podcasts or poems, beautiful art or music, hopeful prayers.

But honestly, I don’t have anything like that right now.

All I’ve read and heard in the past week is pathology reports, treatment plans, oncologist profiles, survival statistics, hospital handouts, consent forms. Nothing worth sharing, trust me.

The only beauty and truth I have to offer you today comes from our middle son.

Last weekend, in the midst of this terrible whirlwind, our family went to a wedding. When the bride and groom stood up and spoke their vows, our 8 year-old turned to me and whispered:

In sickness and in health. That’s you now.

His words have been ringing in my head all week, the still point in the spinning world.

Which is why the only holy labor I can lift up today is my husband’s.

I rarely write about him, here or anywhere. He’s a private person, not on social media, never one to speak first. But the love and loyalty this man has shown me—his generosity and care, his unfailing support and sacrifice, not only in the latest hardest days but for the past twenty years of my life—stands among the holiest labor I have ever seen.

So today I just want to speak his name in this space and say: Franco David Fanucci, your love has been the biggest gift of my life, and your labor for me and our children has surpassed every dream I had for a partner and spouse.

I remember those last awful days before Maggie and Abby were born, when we would leave for the hospital every morning in the dark. You would sling my hospital bag over your shoulder and hold my hand tight as we walked to the car. I would catch sight of the moon as we drove to the doctor again, never knowing what the day would bring, life or death, and I would whisper to myself the words I carried for decades before I knew what they meant:

What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices?

We thought those were our hardest days, and maybe they were, but right now is giving that grief a terrible run for its money. Yet we have never loved each other more or better than during the worst times, and that strange mystery is never exhausted.

Perhaps this poem can say a sliver of it. Or this one.

But you don’t love poetry. You just love me. That is the holy labor you’ve given every day, the sacred offices of love. My prayer is that everyone who reads these words might one day know such love, tried and tested and true.

I don’t have anything else to say right now except this: love is the only thing that matters, the only reason we are here. You remind me every holy hour.