Til Death Do Us Part

The beginning of love is involuntary. It’s falling and helpless and head-over-heels. It’s a deliriously happy blush that poets and rock stars have spent history and will spend eternity trying to describe to us. But we already know how it feels. We’ve been there and we desperately want to go back there whether we’re single or newly married or divorced or reaching the end of a lifelong partnership. The beginning of love is the inclination to leap without looking. But, sooner or later, we have to look. We have to consider how we will ever go on living if something happens to these people who have become our treasures and where our hearts find rest. Authors Mike and Patti Paschall step into that scary question with Till Death Do Us Part. Through interviews with 12 brave souls who cared for their spouses during end-of-life illnesses, the Paschalls uncover the stories of men and women who have truly been a safe haven even as the storm of life drenched them to the bone. Till Death Do Us Part uses question-and-answer, so we hear directly from the sources. Each interview begins with “Tell us about how you two met and fell in love?” and works through the stories from there. Eventually, the authors come to queries such as “Did his personality change at any level?” “How much of the overall burden did you shoulder by yourself?” “Was there an opportunity to say goodbye before their final sleep?” The answers span the spectrum of human existence as we’re shown pain to the point of torture, love stronger than cancer, brokenness beyond the repair of trite encouragement, hope in things unseen and joy in the face of shattering adversity. In the end, Till Death Do Us Part spares easy answers and trite solutions, but instead buoys us as we face the most frightening questions of life and love and death.