365 Days (Part 2) | ✓

338. Word of the Day

338. Word of the Day: Go to a website that has a word of the day and use it in a poem, story or journal entry you write.

Jubilee

There is an antique cart in my grandparents' house where they keep momentos of their fiftieth wedding anniversary: a porcelain statue of Minnie and Mickey Mouse dancing in wedding clothes, dried roses behind protective glass, lace doilies, and a certificate celebrating their golden jubilee.

I always saw it and never fully appreciated how wonderful it was that they reached fifty years. I can hardly imagine spending fifty years, let alone fifty years with someone. My concept of time is limited to the next few years.

You must love someone an awful lot to spend half a century with them.

That cart is covered with dust now. I wonder if my grandfather ever stops by it and misses her.

Of course he must. He spent over fifty years with her. Every night falling asleep next to her and every morning waking up by her. He loved her. Oh, how you must love someone to reach 50 years. It's not the passionate, fluctuating love, I don't think. It's firm, true, steady, and strong.

What's it like to have the love of your life die before you?

Love is such a scary thing when you consider that.

It's so common these days for it to "not work out." They term it as irreconcilable differences, I think. You expect it to not work out most of the time, but then you remember there's some people who do. There's people who truly grow old together, who get to see each other's wrinkles form and who get to pick out the gray hairs.

I think that's so beautiful. Dear God, I'll take the wrinkles gladly if I have a buddy to go through it with me.

My grandfather has a broken heart. If I asked him, I think he would say the pain was worth it.