By Page Hodel
Doing any one thing over and over on a regular basis for ten years is an extraordinary experience. With repetition and dedication comes the gift of observation, and often, deep reflection. As with everything in life, there is evolution, growth and change.
What started ten years ago, as a promise to my beloved Madalene Rodriguez, as she lay dying of a virulent and devastating ovarian cancer, is that I would continue a sweet little tradition we enjoyed as a fledgling couple falling deeply in love. Making her a heart every Monday as a reminder of our beautiful love has grown from me leaving a heart on her doorstep to sending it out over the Internet to all of our friends and family. It has now expanded into a worldwide weekly community of 3241 people from all walks of life in every country deliberately, and with great intention, sharing a burst of Monday love with all of the people who mean the most to us.
This is a very simple act. There is nothing more to this. It is just expressing love. Each heart is made for Madalene. They belong to Madalene and me, and I intentionally share them as our gift to the world, to become everyone’s.
This very intimate and private exchange between us took on a different expression as I grappled with the grief of her death. I think intuitively knowing that I would never survive this loss, I made a conscious decision that I could either fixate on the unbearable emptiness of what I had lost, or I could remain completely in the moment with the incredible feeling in my heart—of being so in love with Madalene. I chose the love. When somebody you love leaves here, they do not take their love with them. It’s still yours. It lives in your heart.
These hearts are not hearts of sorrow. Yes, they carried me through the unbearable darkest of loss. But they are hearts of great love. They are the physical embodiment of the billion “I love you’s” that I didn’t get to say.
When you lose someone you love, you are stunned into a deafening stupor of trying to make sense of it. Is it our innate unending nature to want to know why? Why do we seek that for which there is no answer? After sending out my hearts to friends and family and receiving the response I did, I knew I wanted my hearts to somehow be of service to others. I could see that there was perhaps an additional higher purpose to these hearts.
It brings me now unfathomable joy to know that my heart creations are shared between lovers, among families, and from friend to friend all over the world. They are given to mothers and sisters and fathers and wives and lovers and grandmas and husbands. I have gotten emails from many faraway countries.
Very late every Sunday night, when I release my Monday heart, I immediately get a response email from a teacher in South Africa. We have started a very dear correspondence that has now spanned 6 years. I have received emails from a courageous lesbian in Serbia, who is an openly out gay person risking her life to express her love. There is a straight farmer in the Midwest who sends a heart to his lifelong, loving wife, and there are elders who send hearts to their grandchildren.
I also hold dear a photograph I received from an 8-year-old girl who had lost her hair to cancer treatment. In this photo, she is standing by her chemo IV towers holding one of my hearts in her hand. Apparently my hearts inspired her to make a macaroni heart for her father on a paper plate to thank him for bringing her to treatments each day.
This remains, and will always be, my gift to my beautiful Madalene. It is my promise and my commitment to my love, and now it belongs to everyone. Madalene changed my life in so many ways. In our short time together, I got to know a dear, kind, warm and wonderful, gentle, artistic, deep and rich soul. For 11 tiny months we soared in that weightless, heavenly, scream it from a mountaintop, swirling like a whirling dervish delirium of new love. I savor and cherish those memories.
I make her Monday Hearts, and I send them out into the world now hoping and praying that they remind us all to live and love with all of our being, for the glorious sliver of time we have here together—taking not one split second for granted and remembering every morsel of life’s sweetness and sharing it with others. We further do this as a reminder that love does make a difference. Love does heal, and love will always win.
If you would like to receive a heart on your digital doorstep every Monday, send me an email to page.hodel@gmail.com and write “subscribe” in the subject line. Your Monday hearts will begin.
I am also thrilled and honored to have been invited by one of my mentors, the exceptional photographer and artist Irene Young, to present a photo exhibit of 30 large prints of my favorite hearts at a beautiful restaurant with delicious food in Albany called Britt–Marie’s. The restaurant is at 1369 Solano Avenue in Albany, CA. The Opening Reception will be held on Saturday, February 13, from 4–6 pm. Please come and share this celebration of love with me! To learn more about “Hearts for Madalene,”please also visit my website at www.mondayheartsformadalene.com
Recent Comments