Love Wins One
Just scanning the paper during the Yankees loss last night (don't get me started) when I came across a couple of death notices on the obituary page.
There's sort of a stop-and-read-me type of element to it when you see the same surname listed twice and that was the case with Robert and Gladys Lloyd of North Tonawanda. When you see the husband and wife died on back-to-back days you might think of a car accident, or worse yet, a murder-suicide type of thing.
Yet this one was about love. Robert and Gladys were married for 74 years. Robert died on October 10th at the age of 103. Gladys died the next day, in the same nursing home at 104.
"They always just did things together," their daughter said. "If my father went, my mother went with him."
I'll say, and it is a storybook type of ending for two people who worked hard to keep it all real.
The obit goes on to speak of their lives together, raising children, sharing interests, cooking and sewing and working on model trains.
The whole story would not have been complete without one special quote from their daughter.
"They thought of each other before themselves most of the time."
If there is a line that defines love between a couple that must be pretty close to how it should be.
Yet it is not often that easy, is it? Relationships seem to come and go because people don't feel they are getting everything they want out of the person they are supposed to be sharing things with.
Wouldn't it be refreshing if before we thought about the next thing we want so desperately, we consider the desires of the one we vowed to share our life with?
Our journey through life basically boils down to a solo act. We will most likely be judged on our own merits, but when one of your true strengths of character is that you loved completely for 74 years, you sort of have a leg up, huh?
To Robert and Gladys - Rest well - you earned it.
There's sort of a stop-and-read-me type of element to it when you see the same surname listed twice and that was the case with Robert and Gladys Lloyd of North Tonawanda. When you see the husband and wife died on back-to-back days you might think of a car accident, or worse yet, a murder-suicide type of thing.
Yet this one was about love. Robert and Gladys were married for 74 years. Robert died on October 10th at the age of 103. Gladys died the next day, in the same nursing home at 104.
"They always just did things together," their daughter said. "If my father went, my mother went with him."
I'll say, and it is a storybook type of ending for two people who worked hard to keep it all real.
The obit goes on to speak of their lives together, raising children, sharing interests, cooking and sewing and working on model trains.
The whole story would not have been complete without one special quote from their daughter.
"They thought of each other before themselves most of the time."
If there is a line that defines love between a couple that must be pretty close to how it should be.
Yet it is not often that easy, is it? Relationships seem to come and go because people don't feel they are getting everything they want out of the person they are supposed to be sharing things with.
Wouldn't it be refreshing if before we thought about the next thing we want so desperately, we consider the desires of the one we vowed to share our life with?
Our journey through life basically boils down to a solo act. We will most likely be judged on our own merits, but when one of your true strengths of character is that you loved completely for 74 years, you sort of have a leg up, huh?
To Robert and Gladys - Rest well - you earned it.
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