Time to Love Out Loud

A little over one week ago, my father-in-law went into the cardiac cath. lab at Evanston hospital for a procedure to, at least temporarily, fix his heart. Bill is eighty, and has had various health problems for many, many years. The last thing I expected, though, was to get a call from my wife at a little after ten that morning, after a family consultation with the surgeon. she told me, "My father didn't make it through the operation".

If the story ended there it would be one thing: a funeral, stories, a luncheon, a few drinks, a few laughs, old friends seen for the first time in years, perhaps even decades; but it doesn't end there. You see, Bill didn't die. The world-class cardiologist who performed his surgery, a man who is as experienced as a surgeon can be, teaching others throughout the world new procedures he's invented, well, he was wrong. Bill pulled through and is still alive.

I need point out that the surgeon took steps to keep my father-in-law alive for a while so the family could come in and talk to him (though he wasn't awake), and those same steps probably saved his life. The additional medicine he was given seemingly gave him a chance to recover.

Now, to say that what happened is a miracle is probably not correct; to treat what happened as a miracle is. And that's where "loving out loud" comes in.

When I arrived at the hospital the family was upstairs in the ICU waiting room. "Why" was the operative question, of course, after I thought that Bill had passed. As the day wore on, and the mood remained somber, I took a walk outside the hospital in the beautiful neighborhood that surrounds it. And a song popped into my head:

If I had only known that you were leaving here so soon
I would not have been so flippant when I offered you the moon
I'd have pulled my chair up closer to the railing of your bed
And chosen much more carefully the words I said

I would ask you for your stories
And I would tell you mine
I would give you much more credit
I would take more of your time
There's so much I left unspoken
If you were here right now
I would love you out loud

If I had said the words "I love you" every time they crossed my mind
Then you would have heard me tell you at least a thousand times
I know you knew it anyway, I guess you understood
But I would like to go back if I only could

I would ask you for your stories
And I would tell you mine
I would give you much more credit
I would take more of your time
There's so much I left unspoken
If you were here right now
I would love you out loud

I would touch you much more often
I would laugh at all your jokes
I would worry through your worries
I would dream through all your hopes
I would pray with you to heaven
Are you watching from there now
Do you know what I would give for the chance somehow

To ask you for your stories
I would tell you mine
I would give you much more credit
I would take more of your time
There's so much I left unspoken
If you were here right now
I would love you out loud
Oh, I would love you out loud

And now the whole family has that chance . . .

Thanks, Carolyn, for expressing sentiments that we all feel at times like these in such a beautiful way.