True Love - for real - Granite Grok

True Love – for real

Having just past another anniversary of my birth (north of 50), and also heading towards another anniversary with TMEW (working on 26), this caught my eye:

Together for 71 years, couple die only four hours apart

During their 71 years of marriage, Don and Myrtle Rutledge rarely spent any time apart.

In the early days, Myrtle picked up the family and followed Don when his job uprooted him.

When one was confined to a hospital, the other stayed right there at the bedside.

They even went fishing together (the family insists Myrtle was the better fisherman), dropping lines in the water whenever they found a little time.

So it was fitting, then, that when Don died just after 11:30 a week ago Monday night, Myrtle passed away just four hours and five minutes later, in the same room at the Golden Living Nursing Home in Southaven near Memphis.

With our celebrity worshipping society (he’s with he….no, she’s with this other one now….and oops, now that one is over here with….), stable marriages often seem to be the outliers in society if we are to believe the MSM (or, at least on what they spend time in reporting). 

71 Years?  That is a couple that said that divorce was not an option.  This was an old school couple that believed their vows – "til death do us part".  

Money?  No.  Fame?  No.  Celebrityhood?  Not a chance.  Stick-to-it-iveness?  Fer sure!  Having made it through a lot of thick and thin so far, and knowing that there will be much more to come (that’s just life, folks), that’s what it takes.

The secret?


No, not what most people think – it’s not love.  Rather, a word that seems out of sort with the remnents of the Sixties "if it feels good, do it" (and the complementary – "Hey, what’s in it for me?" mentality).

Simply – commitment.  Period.  End of Story.  Even when it hurts and hurts and hurts some more. 

"I was glad it happened that way. I wasn’t glad she was gone," Eunice said. "I was just glad she didn’t have to be here without him."

[snip]

They married in 1936 and, with the exception of Don’s short time as a Navy Seabee at the end of World War II, spent most of the rest of their days together.

Where Don was, Myrtle wasn’t far behind. Or the opposite. For 71 years.

"Whatever one liked to do," Eunice said, "the other one did it with them."

Fishing. Playing cards. Watching television.

Previous statement from me aside….love does help!  And it has to be cultivated – day in and day out, even when it hurts.  Too often, love is used as just a noun. Remember, love is also verb.  And I also, as a committed Christian, always have to remember that I, as a husband, I am commanded to love my wife (Eph 5:33 "However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.")

This touched a chord:

And then there was that longtime staple of young couples in love, handholding. Even to the last, Don and Myrtle clutched each other’s hands in a quiet show of love, something everyone who saw them remarked upon.

Charlotte: "They held hands anytime they went anywhere, always held hands."

Eunice: "They held hands wherever they went."

Juanita: "They were always holding hands, always. They didn’t go anywhere without holding hands. They sat out on the front porch swing, holding hands."

Keeping the fire alive.  Together.

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