2024, Family, History, Music, Uncategorized

Senior Romance

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Husband and I were contemplating the possibility that we would have a bumper crop of eggplants, and sat down together in the living room to search the New York Times Food app and other on-line sites for eggplant recipes in the event our fears came true. Husband commented that it was such a nice thing to be able to sit down with one’s partner of many years and do something as simple and as satisfying as hunt for recipes, and that this was a wonderful example of senior romance. He then told me that he ran across a You Tube video of a song by Holly Williams, and that it reminded him of my parents. He played the video for me. It was quite sweet. She wrote it about her grandparents.

This brought to mind the Nanci Griffith number that I have always loved:

Both my sets of grandparents were married for more than 50 years, and were pretty devoted, but also pretty crabby with each other at times. I remember taking care of my paternal grandfather while my grandmother was having gall bladder surgery, I was about 17, and he needed care as he had a stroke and was paralyzed on his left side and had his left leg amputated due to diabetes. He was always pretty stoic, but told me out of the blue while I was helping him get his prosthesis on that “She’s a pretty good grandma, you know”, which was his way of telling me that he was worried about her and he wanted her to come home.

Who are the most devoted older couples you know? Other examples of sweet senior romance in songs or stories?

27 thoughts on “Senior Romance”

  1. I nominate Robin and I. We’re approaching our 54th anniversary next month.

    We don’t look like the header photo quite yet, and for various reasons none of our parents or grandparents achieved that either.

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    2. If we fit the profile of “older couple”, and I think we do, I object to our long happy bond being characterized as “sweet”. That seems like an oversimplification and patronizing to me.
      I suspect a lot of older couples would agree.

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  2. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    Lou and I have been married 58 years; however, only 31 to each other. I was married 10 years to wasband, and Lou was married 17 to his erstwife. We are off to the North Country.

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  4. Well, Renee, I’m wiping away tears so I can see my iPad…

    I would have to nominate my maternal grandparents. They were both from Waseca. He was Catholic and she was Presbyterian. There was a very real line drawn in Waseca. If you were Catholic you didn’t cross it to hang around with Protestants. Grandpa was from a strict family. They must have met in school. Waseca was a small community then. She was the only girl in the Waseca Blue Jays marching band, and she played French horn and marched in heels. His mischievous ways matched her sense of humor perfectly. He broke every unwritten rule to marry her and was disowned by his family. He left the Catholic Church and became a Presbyterian. They worked hard together on a small farm near Owatonna, then he worked for an International Harvester dealership. She always loved gardening and continued to have a large garden as long as she could. Later, when I had a large garden, she teased me. She said, “What are you canning tomatoes for? That’s what grocery stores are for.” All my life, I had enjoyed her canned vegetables, jams, jellies, sweet corn, squash, homemade soups, and the best rhubarb meringue pie I’ve ever had in my life.

    Those who enjoy such a beautiful partnership are truly blessed.

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  6. Just yesterday I was reading Roz Chast’s Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, about Chast as a single child helping her parents in their final decline. Her parents were firmly bonded but I doubt Chast or anyone else would describe their long marriage as sweet. It was, however, what they chose and what they were comfortable with.

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  7. When you’re in the moment it doesn’t seem sweet, but in retrospect it might. There is a photo of my folks when they first moved into an apartment after selling their house, at around age 70. The are literally putting their heads together as they try to figure out how to work some gizmo..

    And we may as well get this going:

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    1. It’s one thing if you are thinking about your own life together and reminiscing. It’s another if you are looking at a marriage from the outside, especially when the partners are elderly, and declaring it “sweet”. That, it seems to me, is just a short distance from”cute”, which is inarguably patronizing.

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  8. Krista your description of your parents is so sweet. My spouse and I were married 52 years- at the end with his dementia he still recognized me and was so sweet. Sometimes love is subtle but strong and still there.

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  9. I can think of very few married couples whose relationship I would characterize as sweet. But there are plenty that I would nevertheless view as successful and rewarding marriages. I also think that most successful marriages have weathered challenges that less committed relationships simply don’t survive.
    This song by Bill Morrissey describes such a union:

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  11. My folks had just passed their 50th anniversary when my dad died. They had both come from very dysfunctional childhoods and that was their glue. They decided when they married that they absolutely did not want to live that kind of life or bring kids into that kind of situation and they succeeded.

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  12. I am always loving to Sandra when I visit, kissing her and hugging her, which is awkward to do with a person in a wheelchair. I stroke her arms and her back and brush her hair (wig) until she is placed in her recliner/lift chair. We talk. Her part is nonsense. About half the days she is loving in return.
    Yesterday she decided it was cute to be mildly mean to me. At one point she stuck her tongue at me to show she had a whole large pill in her mouth. It was her diabetes pill. For 15 minutes she would not swallow it or let the aide have it. They can crush most of her large pills and put them in pudding or applesauce. This one they cannot. Soon after lunch she always drops off to sleep and is lifted into her recliner and in fact is lifted in and out of everything.
    Today she was in a dark mood and was unresponsive to me at first. I mentioned we had an anniversary coming up. I asked if she wanted to know the number. She did not. She had no interest in it. She told me I could find another woman to celebrate it with.
    I came home and did a meditation on grief. “In grief we got to see how much one life can touch us.” Then I laid down in my dark room for an hour, trying to sleep. Trying not to think.
    Then I read this blog. And I cried. Not for the post but for Sandra and I. This is not how a long marriage should end. I do not nominate our marriage soon to be for 59 years.

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