I was in their bedroom.
She was lying on her back, staring at the ceiling. He came in with the dog and stretched out on his side of the king sized mattress. 
I took a seat on what Google tells me is called an "adult walker with seat and wheels"...that name captures some of the indignity of aging.

We talk about the present...a reality in which mobility is limited, health comprised, possibility fading. It does not feel safe to stay here. The future? Unthinkable. We retreat, instead, to the past and I watch her come alive. The past - when adult walkers with seats and wheels did not exist.

The day she said "I do", she wore her lace graduation dress finished with a small, flower festooned hat. He wore, "a suit, I guess." They were so young their parents had to sign for them. They stood surrounded by their parents and siblings in a little parsonage in the panhandle of Texas and pledged to take each other from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part.

She was 17 and he was 20...did they have any idea the weight those words carried?

I take you...all of you, for all your life and mine - whatever that means, whatever comes from this day forward. We will face it, whatever it is, together.

63 years later, he's here and she's here and they're still taking each other. When you ask me what love is, I will tell you - it's them. 

In honor of Bill & Annette.