Most people need to hear those "three little words" I love you. Once in a while, they
hear them just in time. I met Connie the day she was admitted to the hospice ward,
where I worked as a volunteer. Her husband, Bill, stood nervously nearby as she was
transferred from the gurney to the hospital bed. Although Connie was in the final
stages of her fight against cancer, she was alert and cheerful. We got her settled in.
I finished marking her name on all the hospital supplies she would be using, then
asked if she needed anything. "Oh, yes," she said, "would you please show me how to
use the TV? I enjoy the soaps so much and I don't want to get behind on what's happening."
Connie was a romantic. She loved soap operas, romance novels and movies with a good
love story. As we became acaquainted, she confided how frustrating it was to be married
32 years to a man who often called her "a silly woman." "Oh, I know Bill loves me," she
said , "but he has never been one to say he loves me, or send cards to me." She sighed
and looked out the window at the trees in the courtyard. "I'd give anything if he'd say
'I love you,' but it's just not in this nature," Bill visited Connie every day. In the
beginning, he sat next to the bed while she watched the soaps. Later, when she began
sleeping more, he paced up and down the hallway outside her room. Soon, when she no longer
watched television and had fewer warking moments, I began spending more of my volunteer
time with Bill. He talked about having worked as a carpenter and how he liked to go fishing.
He and Connie had no children, but they'd been enjoying retirement by traveling, until
Connie got sick. Bill could not express his feelings about the fact that his wife was dying.
One day, over coffee in the cafeteria, I got him on the subject of women and how we need
romance in our lives; how we love to get sentimental cards and love letters. "I don't have
to," he said. "She knows I do!" "I'm sure she knows," I said, reaching over and touching his
rough, carpenter's hands that were gripping the cup as if it were the only thing he had
to hang onyo "but she needs to hear it, Bill. She needs to hear what she has meant to you
all these years. Please think about it."