当男人爱上女人

她翻开另一页，补充道“他热情、幽默、善良、稳重”。对于这个与她共同生活并相爱了大半辈子的人，她这样写道：“他总会在我需要的时候陪伴我。”

My friend John McHugh is always telling me things, things that younger men need wiser, older men to tell them. Things like whom to trust, how to love, how to live a good life.

Not long ago John lost his wife, Janet, to cancer. God knows she was a fighter, but in the end the disease won their eight-year battle.

One day John pulled a folded paper from his wallet. He’d found it, he told me, while going through drawers in his house. It was a love note, in Janet’s handwriting. It looked a little like a schoolgirl’s daydream note about the boy across the way. All that was missing was a hand-drawn heart and the names John and Janet. Except this note was written by the mother of seven children, a woman who had begun the battle for her life, and very probably was within months of the end.

It was also a wonderful prescription for holding a marriage together. This is how Janet McHugh’s note about her husband begins:” Loved. Cared. Worried. ”

As quick with a joke an John is, apparently he didn’t joke with his wife about cancer. He’d come home, and she’d be in one of the moods cancer patients get lost in, and he’d have her in the car faster than you can say DiNardo’s, her favorite restaurant. “Get in the car,” he’d say,” I’m taking you out to dinner.”

He worried, and she knew it. You don’t hide things from someone who knows better.

“Helped me when I was sick.” is next. Maybe Janet wrote her list when the cancer was in one of those horrible and wonderful remission periods, when all is as it was—almost—before the disease, so what harm is there in hoping that it’s behind you, maybe for good?

“Forgave me for a lot of things.”

“Stood by me.”

And then, good service to those of us who think giving constructive criticism is our religious calling: “Always complimentary.”

“Provide everything I ever needed.” Janet McHugh next wrote.

Then she’d turned the man she had lived with and been in love with for the majority of her life. She’d written:” Always there when I needed you.”

The last thing she wrote sums up all the others. I can picture her adding it thoughtfully to her list. ”Good friend.”

I stand beside John now, unable even to pretend that I know what it feels like to lose someone so close. I need to hear what he has to say, much more than he needs to talk.

“John,” I ask,” how do you stick by someone through 38 years of marriage. “let done the sickness too? How do I know I’d have what it takes to stand by my wife if she got sick?”

“you will,” he says. ”If you love her enough, you will.”

相关单词：daydream

daydream解释：v.做白日梦，幻想

daydream例句：

Boys and girls daydream about what they want to be.孩子们遐想着他们将来要干什么。

He drifted off into another daydream.他飘飘然又做了一个白日梦。

相关单词：prescription

prescription解释：n.处方，开药；指示，规定

prescription例句：

The physician made a prescription against sea- sickness for him.医生给他开了个治晕船的药方。

The drug is available on prescription only.这种药只能凭处方购买。

相关单词：apparently

apparently解释：adv.显然地；表面上，似乎

apparently例句：

An apparently blind alley leads suddenly into an open space.山穷水尽，豁然开朗。

He was apparently much surprised at the news.他对那个消息显然感到十分惊异。

相关单词：constructive

constructive解释：adj.建设的，建设性的

constructive例句：

We welcome constructive criticism.我们乐意接受有建设性的批评。

He is beginning to deal with his anger in a constructive way.他开始用建设性的方法处理自己的怒气。

相关单词：complimentary

complimentary解释：adj.赠送的，免费的，赞美的，恭维的

complimentary例句：

She made some highly complimentary remarks about their school.她对他们的学校给予高度的评价。

The supermarket operates a complimentary shuttle service.这家超市提供免费购物班车。