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A love deeper than words

Peter Clough

He visits her three times a day. On this warm afternoon in February, Peter Derksen has made the familiar drive across Abbotsford to the Menno Hospital to have tea with his wife, Agatha.

“Hi honey, look who’s here,” he says and plants a kiss on her cheek. Agatha, her hands clasped tightly, stares into the ground. Today it takes him a little longer than usual – but within seconds he’s brought a smile to her face.

Call it what you will. True love. Devotion. Commitment. The importance of communication in making a relationship last.

Peter and Agatha Derksen can teach other couples a few lessons about all of these. Thirty-two years ago,

Photo courtesy of The Vancouver Province

Agatha suffered severe brain injuries in a car crash. Since then, she has needed constant hospital care. Her cognitive abilities have been greatly diminished. Despite all that, their marriage of 54 years is flourishing.

Peter is as familiar at the hospital as the nursing staff. Day after day, he’s there to feed Agatha her meals. He helps with the lifting, the dressing, the commode. He talks to her sweetly as they go through old family snapshots. “Do you remember that day?” he’ll ask. If she’s feeling up to it, Agatha will answer with a nod or a shake. It’s how they communicate – how they keep their marriage alive.

“When we got married, we made a promise for life,” says Peter. “I loved her then, and I don’t see why I should quit loving her now. I still have a wife, and we still get along good.”

They go to church together, and occasionally Peter takes Agatha to hear his performances with the Abbotsford Male Chorus. Best of all, though, are the camping trips they take in the summer. He wheels Agatha out to his specially-equipped van, and they head up into the mountains, sometimes going as far as Alberta, where their daughters live.

The camping trips bring back memories. It was what they liked to do with their three teenage girls before their lives were turned upside down.

Before the accident, Peter drove a school bus in the Courtenay area of Vancouver Island. Agatha brought in extra cash by cleaning houses. He says she was a jolly, outgoing woman who loved to socialize and spend time with her family at the beach.

One miserable night in January 1968, she was heading home from work, her 19-year-old daughter at the wheel. An oncoming car lost control in the wet snow. Peter remembers driving past the accident site on his way to the hospital. Their daughter survived the crash with minor injuries. Agatha, meanwhile, fought for her life.

She remained in a coma for three months. Peter pretty well knew what his future held. Agatha had suffered irreversible damage to the brain-stem. But if the thought of leaving her in long-term care and going his own way ever crossed his mind, he discarded it right away. “It was not an option,” he says.

All these years later, the pay-off is that he’s still a happily married man. “And I think she’s happy,” says Peter. “I just know she appreciates it when I’m there. I think we communicate well.”

Communication. It’s clear from the glow on Agatha’s face as he talks to her that they have an understanding that goes much deeper than words. Not that Agatha has completely lost the ability to find words. Every once in a while, to his utter astonishment, she’ll just blurt something out. One day, Peter had driven her back to his apartment. It was unusually bright outside.

“She was lying on the couch,” he says, “All of a sudden, she comes out with ‘Close the drapes!’ I came a little closer to make sure that I heard it, and she said it again. ‘Close the drapes!’ ”

He closed the drapes.

Peter and Agatha Derksen are members of Central Heights MB church in Abbotsford, B.C. This article is reprinted, with permission, from The Vancouver Province newspaper.

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Last modified August 12, 2000.

© 2000 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
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