“They were true soul mates,” says the grandson of his close to 100 years old, recently deceased, grandparents. They had been married for nearly 70 years and when the grim reaper came calling, it apparently did it to them together; the grandmother getting a heart attack within 10 minutes of the grandfather getting a heart attack.
Warm, fuzzy stories like this always make me feel similar to the way I feel when in the exalted company of a warm chocolate brownie with ice cream, a sprinkling of nuts and some good, old chocolate sauce.
However – and there is always a ‘however’ after a brownie – the next thought that interjects is – married for 70 years?! WOW!
Dying together is easy, but living together for 70 years?! WOW!
Living together through dish washing and laundry, clashing bio-clocks, unmatched temperature thermostats, school and college admissions, household budgets, family holidays, demanding jobs and shamancy (yes, its a word, fancy+sham = shamancy) social expectations, and still wanting to die together?
Killing the other, I understand. I would even go so far as to condescend that any man married to me for so long, however long, would plot to murder me at some point. In fact, I am sure that at certain times of the month, which may clash with the full moon, the lovely spouse does secretly tuck a baseball bat under his pillow, you know, for self defense, just in case…
But in an age where love stories die premature deaths at the hands of internet, career, ambition, opportunity and materialism, to live a love story through all that life throws at us and to come out shining at the other end of the tunnel – would it still be a love story?
What do you think?