Love Less Seen.

He shuffled in wearing only his saggy boxer briefs and a white t-shirt.

“What are you doing?!” my grandma sternly said referring to his attire. She sat in her blue glider with her feet up as she does most nights when she manages and rolled her eyes in my direction, and then turned back to my grandpa.

“I’m coming to kiss you good-night,” he said and with that, leaned over to kiss her, weight on his cane. He did not kiss her on the forehead as one might expect, being the highest point on her slouched frame, nor on the cheek but on her lips. She kissed him back.

My grandma and grandpa have had their highs and lows and are now in one of their last chapters. We celebrated my Grandpa’s 90^th birthday in the fall and while they are relatively healthy, old age has closed in. Questions are repeated over and over and over and over and over. Personal hygiene is not what it used to be and every misstep threatens a hospital stay or worse. They don’t get out much – my grandma, not at all. All they have is each other. It sheds new light on what it means to “grow old together.”

I never knew my grandparents to be romantic people. I lived with them for six years as a child and I never remember overly romantic gestures or even date nights. Evenings consisted of Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy. I suppose it was a comfortable love, and yet as I watch them now, I think that I must have missed something.

Grandma and Grandpa at their 60th wedding anniversary celebration

Just over a week ago, before my grandma finally went into hospital (a place she had managed to avoid for years and years) to treat an infection. He laid with her as they waited for the ambulance.