Love and Marriage

I__ and I went to Michigan yesterday, to visit my grandparents. My grandmother recently had her 3rd stroke (2 mini strokes followed by this more major stroke), and is in a rehabilitation nursing home for the moment. As might be expected, she's in rough shape: she's really exhausted, unable to eat solid food, limited in her ability to walk and, most importantly, seemingly having some trouble getting her thoughts out of her head and into the world. She spent a lot of our visit staring at her hands, or (sweetly) staring at my hand intertwined with I___'s and smiling to see the two of us together.

I guess that's the part that stuck about the visit, the part I want to keep in mind as I__ and I move towards marriage and (groan) write our vows. My grandparents are in their 90s (!), and Grandpa still plays golf a couple times a week. They still kiss each other hello and goodbye, hold hands, and generally do their best to take care of each other. My grandfather seemed to be in storytelling mode yesterday, and he told us stories about the south side of Chicago in the 1920s and 30s, when he and Grandma grew up, lived, and fell in love. Apparently, they met through a church bowling league.

My thoughts are a little scrambled here, but basically I want to remember the thought that kept running through my head yesterday: I hope I___ and I are this lucky, this caring, and this loving when we're their age. It seems like a cliched sentiment, but I'm not sure that it is. After all, loving and supporting someone for the rest of my life seems like the biggest challenge I've ever faced.

So my brain is full of love and marriage and, generally, mush. So now I get to go grade papers on.....trauma. Um. Yeah.