"Ok, dad, you tell the kids how you and mom stayed married for 58 years," my father said one night.
The family sat around the kitchen table, eating ice-cream sundaes in celebration of my grandparents' 58th wedding anniversary.
The question confused my then 86-year-old grandfather, so my dad had to explain it and repose it a few times. Once he finally understood the intent of the conversation, my grandfather succinctly replied, "Well, I found a person who was not male."
The entire family erupted into laughter. Neeldess to say, it wasn't exactly the reaction we expected. For the next hour or so, my grandfather explained to myself and my three siblings some of the things he looked for when dating my grandmother. He posed scenarios, quizzed us on how he would answer different questions, and gave us a little bit of insight into how he and my grandmother started a marriage that lasted for nearly 59 years.
This weekend my family and I will fly to Wisconsin to attend a memorial service for my grandmother who recently passed away. We flew to Missouri back in 2009 to do the same for my grandfather.
At the time my grandfather passed away, he and my grandmother were just a few months shy of being married for 59 years. Their marriage has astonished me for years and to this day, I pray that one day I can experience half the love and joy that they experienced during the six decades they shared together.
My grandmother and grandfather met on a blind date to the circus. He was in the Navy. She was a nurse. Originally, my grandfather wasn't even supposed to go on the date, but the original blind dater couldn't go at the last minute, so my grandfather's friend asked if he'd go out with Betty Elison. Six months later, they were married.
I remember when the whole family got together in 2000 to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. We went to a retreat center of sorts in Ohio and spent a weekend of fun and laughter. I remember we went horseback riding and my horse kept trying to get around the horse in front of it. My Uncle Mark had to go to the emergency room because he royally rolled his ankle while playing a game with us kids. My grandpa and grandma gave all of us girls "dime-ond" rings. They were rings with a dime placed on it and a diamond in place of the flame in the center torch. It was a sweet, sweet weekend and one of the last that I truly remember enjoying as a full family.
You see, my grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. I don't remember exactly when, but it was right around that time. Maybe a couple of years before. I was only 11 at that anniversary, so the exact memory of when my grandmother developed Alzheimer's is a little hazy.
My grandparents used to live in a little town in Montana called Seeley Lake. It was the epitamy of a tiny town and they lived a good ways outside of the town itself up in the mountains. My grandma had a garden with really high fences to keep the deer out and there were salt blocks in the back yard for the deer to come. I remember visiting one time and my brother getting so excited that the deer had come that he ran outside and scared them all away. I remember my grandma telling us to not go to sleep with wet hair because otherwise it might freeze overnight. I remember sitting on the counter, talking with my grandma as she made cinnamon rolls. I remember the wonderful sweetness of my grandparents' love, even after so many years.
A few years after their 50th wedding anniversary, my grandparents had to sell their house in Seeley Lake and move. My grandmother's Alzheimer's was continuing to grow worse and my grandfather realized he couldn't take care of her anymore, so they moved from the cold, snowy state of Montana to a retirement home near Kansas City, Missouri that specialized in Alzheimer's care.
They were able to live together for a good while, but as the years passed, my grandmother's health continued to decline and she had to be moved into a specific Alzeheimer's unit. But still, my grandfather woke up every morning, worked out, and walked over to my grandma's room so he could have breakfast with her. Every single day, until the day he died.
And you want to know the craziest part?
When my grandfather passed away in 2009, it had been over a year (possibly closer to two or three) since my grandmother had recognized my grandfather. There were times that came and went where she knew who he was, but on the whole, she counted him as a stranger. He got up every single day to have breakfast with a woman he had known and loved for nearly 60 years and when she saw him, she saw a stranger.
If that's not love, I don't know what is.
I pray that one day a man will love me as much as my grandfather loved my grandmother. I pray that one day a man will love me so much that just being with me, even if I have no idea who he is, is enough.
My grandfather could've called it quits. He could've put my grandmother into a retirement home and gone off and lived his life however he wanted for the remaining years, but he didn't. He sacrified so much because he loved my grandmother and he knew that when he made those vows in 1950 they really meant "til death do us part."
My grandparents love story is, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful love stories ever. It's been romanticized and done up by Hollywood using movies like "The Notebook" and (along a similar vein) "The Vow." But their love story isn't fabricated. It's not made up out of someone's head. It's real. It happened and it's beautiful.
When I think about my grandparents and their story, all I can thing is, "I want a love like this."