POSTS
Hearts for eternity
By hisham
There once was a little boy with a very big heart.
“I’m afraid your son has a rare congenital heart defect called Vendler’s Cavity. It’s an extreme case of malformed semilunar valves and a larger-than-normal heart size,” said the doctor. “I’m sorry, but your son is not expected to live long.”
The little boy was taken from doctor to doctor, his parents trying in vain to have someone say to them he will live forever. All they heard was that he will die sooner than later.
Alas, the years passed and the little boy was no longer little nor a boy, for he was a man.
With whatever time he had, the man decided that he would help people and commit to charitable causes rather than to worry about his future.
He traveled the world, saw places and met people from cultures far and apart. He also met a girl. She was a charity worker that pulled the strings of his large heart in ways never before known to him.
One day, while observing the sunset on the shores of an impoverished country, the man stared into the sea and said, “There’s something I’ve got to let you know, love.”
The girl looked at him as she held his hand.
Aid transport trucks roared past, spreading a haze of dust across the shoreline.
“I was born with an enlarged heart, a congenital defect called Vendler’s Cavity,” he said. “It’s rare…less than fifty diagnosed cases since the forties…I was never expected to live beyond ten years, let alone twenty-three.”
She tightened her grip on his hand. They both looked at each other.
“I’m with you, this is real, you and I,” he continued. “Yet my heart could give any minute now. I cannot understand nor accept the certainty by which my heart would fail at any moment, for I am here next to you and it feels like an eternal bond that could never be severed.”
In silence they looked at each other. The girl’s eyes widened as she scanned his face.
“They told me I wouldn’t live past ten as well,” she said. “My folks took me from clinic to clinic when I was little.”
He shut his eyes, opening them with a sigh and shook his head. “You have Vend…”
“Yes. And if I didn’t, I’d never have taken this route, joining the corps to help out. I’d never have met you,” she said.
The two embraced, their hearts conversing in quiet contemplation.
“What happened here?” said a passerby.
“A truck driver on his way to camp found them as they are and called base. The medics couldn’t do anything. Kids…probably OD’d on something,” an aid agency employee replied as he shut the ambulance door.
The last light of dawn escaped the horizon and the sea glistened under the moonlight. Faint traces of him and her remained on the shore, dusted by the harsh sands of time, swept by the gentle waves of love. For the two have found each other and their hearts have shed their weak earthly cloaks for heaven’s eternal grace.
The heart is a strange object, taking its cues from life’s reality, until it finally carries us to where we truly belong for all eternity.