I often think about movies and the way relationships are portrayed. I have to remind myself that each show or episode is scripted. Movies are meant to help us to escape and focus our thoughts somewhere else for a change. In thinking further about relationships, I came across this story. When I first read it, I found a sadness to this story. However, when I read it again, I realized that there was a lesson to be learned. One that made me appreciate what so many others can’t see in their own relationships.

The story is about a man who asks his wife for a divorce. As the husband offered his wife money and shares of his company, she refused all of it. His wife had only two requests of him. The first was that for the next thirty days they would keep their lives as normal as possible for their son’s sake, as he was finishing the school year. The second required her asking her husband a question: ” Do you remember carrying me out of our bridal room on our wedding day?” At first he couldn’t understand her question. “Why would anyone ask this question?” What he didn’t realize was the importance of his wife asking such a question. It was her second request that really puzzled him, as she would ask him that for the next month he would carry her every morning out of the bedroom and to the front door each morning. Even though he didn’t understand her request, he had agreed to it.

At first it was awkward for him. But by the third and fourth time, he started to not feel so awkward anymore. Instead he began to feel closer to her. He had also come to realize how light in weight she had become. You see the act of this wife’s request to carry her every morning from the bedroom to the front door, as they did on their wedding day, stirred up emotions that many couples have lost. Unfortunately, as the husband in this story decided he would save his marriage it was too late. All that time that he had distanced himself from his wife she had been suffering with cancer. On the day that he sent her flowers to tell her he didn’t want to divorce her any longer, she had passed away in their home. It was too late to make it right. It was too late to say the words he wanted to say. It wasn’t meant to be.

This story reminds me to say what you need to say. We may not have tomorrow to make those relationships right or to say what we mean to say. We can easily forget that today is only for so long, yesterday is gone, and tomorrow isn’t guaranteed.