Their Story

Her sense of sound and sight impaired
he now arranges all her appointments
and ferries her here and there. He often
speaks for her and must be nudged to
remind him she can still do that herself.
On her part the cooking, baking, cleaning
and laundry are done as they always have
been, pleasurably and with the care they
all deserve for age has not diminished
her energy or care for him. They do have
their separate functions in caring for one
another, but there are times those functions
can be shared and a frisson of happiness
pervades when he is beside her in the
kitchen, the garden or bedroom. She has 
baked coconut cupcakes as a surprise and 
when he sees them remarks that truly, he 
had just earlier been thinking of them as 
a treat, how amazing she thought the same. 
Hardly amazing, more in the realm of habit 
and anticipating one another for they have 
been companions in love and in life for 
over sixty years. Throughout those years 
he never stopped surprising her with the 
nature of his interest in the world around 
them and his ability to use his hands and his 
natural aesthetic to produce objects from art 
to the rude necessities of life. His inquisitive 
mind nurtured her own, curious too, about 
what motivates people and societies and the
heavens above as they move and interact.
He depends on her presence and she on his
ever present smile as powerful as the sun.