Syndicated columnist Marc Munroe Dion: Why are you so good to me?

About 20 years ago, after dark on a chilly October weeknight, I went a local discount store to buy a tie. They have cheap ties.

When you walked into the store, you came through the outside door, and there was a small area and then a flight of five or six stairs, and then the door into the store. In between the doors was a bench built into one wall.

In front of me was an older couple, maybe in their 70s. She wore black pants, a bright red blouse and a short black coat. He wore the kind of blue work clothes a lot of men wear to work in auto body shops or factories. I've known plenty of men who wore work clothes long after they stopped working, not because they were poor but because they didn't think they had a reason to buy new clothes just because they retired.

They walked in the door ahead of me, and he sat down on the bench.

"What's the matter?" the woman said.

"Nothing," the man said. "Just let me catch my breath."

"We can go home if you want," she said.

"Naah," he said. "I said I'd take you shopping. Just let me sit for a minute. Go in and look around. I just need a minute."

She put her hand on his shoulder.

"I don't know why you're so good to me," she said.

"I don't know why, either," he said.

Of course, she stayed with him, and I saw them come in together in a few minutes, and I bought a blue tie with red dots on it, and I went home.

I was single then, with no thought of marrying anyone, but I knew I wanted what they seemed to have, even though I didn't know what it was called, and still don't.

I took my wife, Deborah, to the hospital last week, to a hospital in Boston, 40 miles from where we live. The doctor had found something growing inside her, and the doctor wasn't sure what it was, and I wasn't even sure where it was, only that it was inside her small, pale body, and the doctor had listed cancer among the possibilities.

They took her away to surgery, and I sat in the waiting room for five hours, considering the terrifying thought of loss and going outside every 45 minutes to stand on the sidewalk and smoke while people wearing office clothes went in and out of the Starbucks across the street.

And I thought of that old couple and how maybe I was done having the thing they had that I wanted.

The surgeon came and found me and said my wife didn't have cancer, that the thing they took out of her wasn't cancer. She'll be fine.

That old guy in the discount store probably couldn't describe how he felt about the older woman in the bright red blouse, but I saw it in his eyes, and I knew it for what it was, even all those years ago.

Any man who describes love is probably just repeating what he's heard, saying, "She's the best thing that ever happened to me" or, "She's the love of my life." Despite the poems and the songs and the Valentine's Day cards, no one has ever really described love, and it's possible that old news dogs like me shouldn't even try.

Love is the worst thing that can happen to a man because it means he can't live just for himself anymore, and it's the best thing that can happen to a man because it means he doesn't have to live just for himself anymore.

Other than that, it's just sitting and waiting, trying to catch your breath, and hoping she stays with you.

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