Platinum love

Last summer I attended a wedding. The newlyweds were both widowed, and so there was a strong emphasis on mature love, and - with a dozen lively grandchildren running around - on the deep joy and fulfilment to be found in family life. During the reception, I sat opposite an elderly couple, and observed how the wife was so clearly, yet unostentatiously solicitous of her husband, who was in the early stages of dementia. And on a day filled with hope and promise, and pledges of mutual, lifelong love, her care and quiet fidelity was for me the most powerful witness of a deep, selfless love which endures, for better for worse... in sickness and in health... unto death. 

This was a love I saw in my parents, especially in their final, fragile years together. If they were still alive, they'd be 96 and 97, and today they would be celebrating - quietly, though no less lovingly - their Platinum wedding anniversary. There would be no dancing, but plenty of kisses and hand-holding, and in their increasing frailty and infirmity, they'd be highly solicitous and protective of each other. That's how they were in those final years, and the memories I hold of that time are of sickness and pain, yes, but also of the intensity of their self-giving love and affection for each other, often expressed in something as simple as being side by side, holding hands. 

Ten years ago (can it really be ten years already?) I wrote a blog for their 60th wedding anniversary, in which I recounted something of their marriage. Please read about their Diamond love, and then join me in raising a glass to them, and to generous, faithful love everywhere. Meanwhile, I have no doubt they're celebrating their love in heaven, along with various relatives and friends who were there to support them and share their newlywed joy on that day, back in 1954, when life, and love and everything lay before them, as they vowed to remain together, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health... until death was to part them... and reunite them in eternity.