The Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica

"A Former Justice's Lesson in Love"
Chalice Lighting by Carol-Jean Teuffel
Unitarian Universalist Community Church
Santa Monica, California
June 29, 2008

Throughout her Supreme Court career, Sandra Day O'Connor was known for tempering her rulings with "a concern for how laws applied to real life," said USA Today in an editorial.  Her compassion, it's now clear, was more than just a judicial philosophy.

 

O'Connor retired from the court last year to help care for her husband, John, who suffers from Alzheimer's disease.  Last week, one of their sons said in a tv interview that his father had fallen in love with a fellow patient at his nursing home in Phoenix, and that "Mom was thrilled that Dad was relaxed and happy."

 

After years of anguish and depression, their son said, John O'Connor is behaving "like a teenager in love," and has a new reason for living.  Sandra Day O'Connor could easily have kept quiet about this very intimate development, said The Philadelphia Inquirer, but chose to go public to comfort others in similar circumstances.  "In deed more than word," she's teaching all of a valuable lesson -- "that sometimes love means letting go."