{"id":962,"date":"2008-02-15T10:02:14","date_gmt":"2008-02-15T10:02:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondblue\/2008\/02\/love-knows-no-obstacle-away-fr.html"},"modified":"2008-02-15T10:02:14","modified_gmt":"2008-02-15T10:02:14","slug":"love-knows-no-obstacle-away-fr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/02\/love-knows-no-obstacle-away-fr.html","title":{"rendered":"Love Knows No Obstacle: “Away From Her” (Beliefnet’s Film Awards) and Mike\u2019s Marriage"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Away2_ready.jpg\"
\nToday I had planned an interview with my writing mentor, Mike Leach, whose marriage I hold in high esteem. Whenever I\u2019m unsure of how to tackle something in my own marriage, I call up Mike and listen to his sage advice. But he was sick this week, so I let him off the hook. Yesterday, when I asked him what he did for Valentine\u2019s Day, he told me he got a colonoscopy. It doesn\u2019t get much more romantic than that.
\nMike is a suitable teacher for me because he is living perhaps the worst marriage nightmare possible: caring for a wife with Alzheimer\u2019s. Vickie, his one and only love, fell down the stairs about ten years ago, and since has suffered memory loss. She\u2019s as fit and vibrant as any 60-year-old woman I have ever met. A beautiful person inside and out, you\u2019d never detect her disease. Until she asks the same question twice in ten minutes.
\nI remember the day Mike called me close to tears (and Mike doesn\u2019t cry easily\u2014I\u2019ve tried to make him on several occasions) when he had to take away her car keys. Another time he called to say that he was about to tell his sons and he was nervous.<\/p>\n


\nIronically enough, a friend mentioned to me yesterday the movie \u201cAway From Her\u201d <\/a>starring Julie Christie as a woman (Fiona) suffering from Alzheimer\u2019s who convinces her husband, Grant, (Gordon Pinsent), that she should move into a facility for patients with Alzheimer\u2019s. As I watched certain clips of the movie, like when Fiona tells Grant that \u201call we can aspire to in this situation is a little grace,\u201d I thought of Mike and his lessons on how to love your spouse in the face of illness, how to handcuff a disease and not let it get between you and the one to whom you said \u201cI do.\u201d
\nActually all of the films considered for Beliefnet\u2019s Film Awards\u2014\u201cAmazing Grace,\u201d \u201cAtonement,\u201d \u201cThe Kite Runner,\u201d \u201cAway From Her,\u201d and \u201cJuno\u201d (click here to see clips from them all and to vote for your favorite) <\/a>present marital challenges and offer profound spiritual lessons. But \u201cAway From Her\u201d gets my vote since it preaches the message of a loyalty and love that surpasses understanding and logic, and because it calls to mind everything I have learned about marriage from Mike.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today I had planned an interview with my writing mentor, Mike Leach, whose marriage I hold in high esteem. Whenever I\u2019m unsure of how to tackle something in my own marriage, I call up Mike and listen to his sage advice. But he was sick this week, so I let him off the hook. Yesterday,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marriage"],"yoast_head":"\nLove Knows No Obstacle: "Away From Her" (Beliefnet's Film Awards) and Mike\u2019s Marriage - Beyond Blue<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/02\/love-knows-no-obstacle-away-fr.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Love Knows No Obstacle: "Away From Her" (Beliefnet's Film Awards) and Mike\u2019s Marriage - Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Today I had planned an interview with my writing mentor, Mike Leach, whose marriage I hold in high esteem. 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