How to Grow Old Together

This couple was in the lobby of a Mayo Clinic. He is 90 and they've been married 62 years, longer than I have been alive.

I watch them and I think of all I have seen and done, things accomplished at too great expense, things I have failed at, all the ways I've fallen and caused grief and pain to those I've loved and fallen out of love with. I think of the unforeseen twists of fate and turns I've taken that took us all down dark paths. I think of the joys mingled with sorrows, the regrets and the grace of happiness unsought and undeserved. I think of the decades of day to day monotonous sacrifices and the secret self indulgences, the unfulfilled goals, the hopes unrealized, the things I've known for over 50 years but know now will never be.

I look at the woman I love who shares my children, my table, my couch, my bed. I think of the deaths and losses we've shared and those we know will come soon, and those that perhaps may come that we cannot imagine. I see the lines of her face in the morning sun, I hold her aging hands, I know her skin, the beauty of her youth lost, the silent frailties now overtaking her bones. The mirror tells me I am closer to death than my birth too. Time has done us both irreparable harm, but I have no desire to hold a hand that has not touched death, nor do I wish to look into glittering, hopeful, shallow eyes that have not seen my world. I have no longing for the false comfort and the old man's lies of an embrace of a smooth body. I want to face the remaining days of my life with the one whose body, soul and spirit have been my faithful companion in all I've reveled in, longed for, ruined, loved and failed at in life.

Who knows what this couple has faced, shared and endured together to get here. But they make it look worth it.