A Forever Kind of Love

I just love a good love story, don’t you? I ran across one I wanted to share with you.

The headline is what caught my attention. A Brother And Sister Get Married (And Later, Their Son Tweets It)

Okay, I thought to myself, now that is really weird. Then I read the article and it soon became obvious that while different, it really wasn’t as weird as the title wanted you to think.

This story was told by John Fugelsang, it’s about his parents.

John’s mother, Peggy, had an abusive childhood and so she joined a convent taking the name Sister Damien. John’s  father, Jack, had become a Franciscan monk after high school.  By now I’m sure you realize that they weren’t technically related. One was a monk and one a Catholic nun. They met in New York when Jack (Brother Boniface)  had become sick with tuberculosis.

John says, “From all accounts I heard, he fell madly, desperately, insanely in love with this Southern nurse in a nun’s habit that he knew he could never have, and had sworn to God he would never want to have.”

For 10 years John’s father wrote his future wife letters. She had been sent to Malawi to care for people with leprosy.  When

Then,Peggy’s  father died. When she came home, Brother Boniface showed up at the hospital where she was working and finally confessed his love. She didn’t say she loved him back, she was too shocked.

Eventually love won and they broke their religious vows to marry.

“I can honestly say that my father’s love only grew as he got older and as they aged,” says Fugelsang. “The romance didn’t slow down for him at all. He was someone who was completely unable to separate his devotion to God from his devotion to his wife,” John said about his dad.

When Jack was in his 60s he suffered two heart attacks. Doctors told the family there was nothing else they could do.

John said, “It was amazing seeing how even in the last days of his life, the love just got deeper and deeper. I have photos of him in his hospital bed looking at her with a kind of naked, calm love that I’ve seldom seen on a man’s face.”

Jack died in August 2010.

“You know, we live in a culture where men are not really celebrated for love,” says Fugelsang. “And so for me, the most defining personal dynamic in my life has been watching a man madly in love with his wife.”

“And now I’m going to be a dad for the first time,” he continues. “[And] the fact of the matter is, my kid gets to grow up in this beautiful, complicated world because many years ago, some guy in Brooklyn chose love.”

Now that’s what I call a love story. How about you?

This story was on NPR. You can read it in it’s entirety by clicking here.