Grow Old With Me

Love in suffering proves it is a genuine love.The above picture is of my parents. Aren’t they just the sweetest couple? Their life together has been real. They have each suffered and sacrificed to be and stay together. A crazy love by today’s standard of love only when it is pleasant and provides pleasure for self. I examined some crazy love today… at the doctors office.I was sitting in an incredibly uncomfortable gray chair. This chair was all the more uncomfortable when 4:15 went by… my appointment time had been 3:15. To my right, up against the wall and right near the nursing station sat the first couple… they where very advanced in years. A nurse shouts out her name and the wife slowly got up with her walker then started toward the nurse. Her husband was have a real struggle getting up even with the aid of his walker. She stopped dead without looking back and asked him if he needed her. He looked a little embarrassed as she abandoned her walker and slowly came back to help. She smiled at him as she helped him up and they walked out of the room, her in the lead, both heavily relying on their walkers.

Another older couple enters the clinic. Both take off their shoes and the wife took her husbands hand for a momentary squeeze, let go and whispered, ‘Can you see me?’ He nodded yes and she started to walk away. She turned to check on him and said ‘Still see me? Follow me to a chair,’ then reached out, touched his arm and let go again. He followed, struggling not to run into people seated around him. When they finally found seats next to one another they where behind me. I glanced back and noted the comfort they found in being together, it was written all over their posture

The third older couple sat right across from me. He looked at her hand and gruffly said ‘it looks better today’. She smiled and agreed. He then in an even more gruff tone remarked ‘I will stay here when you are called.’ She asks him why? ‘I haven’t a clue what this appointment is all about or what is going on.” “Well, (she huffed) you shan’t learn a thing by sitting out here.” He huffed back and looked at his shoes “even so I am not coming.” She looked at him for a moment, with no signs of offense and told him that was alright. She knew something about him I didn’t… he wasn’t just grumpy and she knew that and so she let him be.This people watching episode had me weepy. I was thinking about my man, how it is going to be hard for each of us to go the distance but I so long to be old and grumpy with him and him alone. I hope we are a cute couple then, playfully grumpy mostly, helpful and still tenderly affectionate… and… I really hope he remembers me, ha ha ha, his memory is already poor.

TTFN