Let me be honest with you: George and I deserve a Nobel Peace Prize just for not killing each other over the past seventy years. When we got married in 1955, I was twenty-one and he was twenty-three. Neither of us had any idea just how stubborn the other person could be.
Right now, George is sitting in his recliner in the living room, looking for the remote control. Again. This man looks for the remote in the same place every single day. I yelled from the kitchen, “You’re sitting on it!”
“What?” George shouted back.
“Turn on your hearing aid!” I shouted louder.
This is our daily routine. Romantic, isn’t it? Well, it’s certainly different from 1962 when George tried to carry me over the threshold of our new house. He dropped me. I sprained my ankle. I should have taken that as a sign of things to come.
The First Trial: The Kids
We have four children. Debbie, Michael, Susie, and the baby, Tommy. Each one drove us crazy in their own special way. Raising four kids in the 1960s was like fighting a war, except wars have cease-fires and parenting doesn’t.
George was your typical 1960s dad. Which means he went to work, came home for dinner, read the newspaper, and asked, “How were the kids?” Meanwhile, I had steam coming out of my ears, the house looked like a tornado hit it, and Tommy was eating dog food. But George would just say, “Seems like a peaceful day.”
But when the kids got sick, that was different. I remember the winter of 1968 when all four of them came down with the flu. I got it too. The house was literally a field hospital. George worked around the clock. He came home from his job and went straight to the pharmacy, made chicken soup (it was terrible, but he tried), put cold washcloths on foreheads, and stayed up all night with the kids while I passed out from exhaustion.
The next morning, when I woke up, George was asleep on the floor with all four kids. They were all piled together under a mountain of blankets, with George’s one arm around Debbie and the other holding Tommy. That’s when I knew. This man wasn’t perfect, but he was on our team.
Mid-Life Crisis (Crises, Actually)
In the 1980s, George had a mid-life crisis. At forty-eight, he suddenly decided he wanted to run a marathon. A marathon! This was a man who complained about walking to the post office!
“Martha, I need to do something new. I need to feel alive.”
I rolled my eyes. “I know you’re alive. I hear you snoring every morning.”
George trained for six months. He got up at 5 AM every day to run. Honestly, I was impressed. Annoyed, but impressed. On race day, I took all the kids to cheer him on. George finished all 26 miles. It took him 4 hours and 47 minutes, and he pretty much walked the last five miles, but he did it.
At the finish line, George came over to me and collapsed. Literally. I caught him (our knees were still good back then), and I heard him whisper, “I did it, Martha. I did it.”
“I’m proud of you,” I said. And I meant it.
After that, George couldn’t get off the couch for a month. He groaned every time he went down the stairs. “Never again,” he said.
“I know,” I replied, smiling.
Empty Nest, Full Hearts
In the 1990s, even Tommy left home. Suddenly, the house was so quiet. For the first time in thirty-five years, it was just George and me.
The first week was strange. We sat across from each other at dinner and just stared.
“What should we do?” George asked.
“I don’t know,” I answered.
We started laughing. We couldn’t stop. We had to get to know each other again. We started dating. At sixty years old! Every Friday night we went to the movies or out to dinner. George held my hand. It was a feeling I’d forgotten during thirty-five years of holding children’s hands.
We fell in love again. No, that’s not quite right. We’d never fallen out of love. It had just been buried under diapers and soccer practices and college tuition. Now that all that was gone, there we were. Two wrinkled people who still liked each other.
When Illness Came Knocking
In 2008, George had a heart attack. It was the scariest day of our lives.
That morning started out normal. George was working in the garden, and I was inside folding laundry. Then George came in and said, “I feel funny.” His face was pale and he was sweating.
I called 911 immediately. The eight minutes until the ambulance arrived felt like a lifetime. I held George’s hand and whispered, “Don’t you do this to me. I can’t live without you.”
“Who’s going to find the remote?” George tried to smile. Making jokes even during a heart attack.
The surgery was successful. They put in three stents. He spent a week in the hospital, then months recovering. I was there every day. I didn’t leave his side except to go home to shower and change clothes.
When George came home, we changed everything. Diet, exercise routine, everything. I took heart-healthy cooking classes. George walked every day, and I walked with him. We got through it together.
That experience taught us something important. The time we have left is a gift. Every day is a bonus.
The Tables Turn
In 2015, I fell. Broke my hip. Suddenly, I was the one who needed care.
George transformed. For seventy years, I had cooked, cleaned, done laundry, managed everything. George was… well, George was just George. But when I was stuck in bed, unable to move, that man became a domestic wizard.
Of course, at first it was a disaster. The first week, every dinner he made was either burned or raw. The laundry all turned pink (red sock incident). The house was… well, let’s just say it was barely recognizable as a house.
But George didn’t give up. He watched YouTube videos to learn how to cook. At eighty-one years old! He wrote down laundry instructions and stuck them on the refrigerator. He made a cleaning schedule.
And taking care of me… that was special. Every morning he brought me breakfast in bed (most of it was edible). He kept track of my medications. He helped me with my physical therapy exercises. He supported me in the shower.
Once, I started crying. “I hate being so dependent. I feel like a burden to you.”
George took my hand and said, “Martha, you took care of me and the kids for sixty years. Now it’s my turn. And honestly, I like having you here. Don’t go anywhere.”
We both cried. How beautiful it is that even past eighty, we still need each other.
Now, This Moment
It’s 2025 now. I’m ninety-one and George is ninety-three. Our bodies aren’t what they used to be. George’s knees are terrible, and my hip still aches sometimes. We both wear hearing aids (George turns his off a lot). We each take five different medications.
But you know what? We’re still here. Together.
Every morning, the first thing George does when he wakes up is check if I’m breathing. I’m not joking. He shakes my shoulder gently, and when I grumble, “What?” he says, “Just checking.”
I do the same thing. When George stops snoring in the middle of the night, I wake up. I can’t fall back asleep until I see his chest rising and falling.
We watch “Wheel of Fortune” together every evening. George still loses the remote, and I still yell, “You’re sitting on it!” This is our routine. Our dance.
Last week George had to go to the hospital. Just a regular checkup, but everything is scary these days. While we were waiting in the waiting room, I held George’s hand. His hand is thin and wrinkled with age, but it still fits perfectly in mine.
“Are you scared?” I asked.
“What’s there to be scared of when you’re next to me?” George answered.
Simple words, but they said everything.
What We’ve Learned
Being together for seventy years isn’t easy. We’ve fought countless times. Because of George’s stubbornness, because of my pickiness, over money, over the kids, over where to go on vacation. Once we didn’t speak to each other for a whole week (I can’t even remember what it was about).
But we always came back. Always.
People ask us what the secret to a long marriage is. Honestly, there’s no magic formula. It’s just this:
Choosing every day. Waking up every morning and choosing to be with this person. On easy days, hard days, boring days.
Laughing together. Life is too short to take everything seriously. I’ve been hearing George’s terrible jokes for seventy years, but I still laugh. (Mostly because he thinks his own jokes are so funny.)
Taking care of each other. For better or worse. In sickness and in health. That’s the promise we made, and we’ve kept it.
Cherishing the little things. George making my coffee in the morning. Me baking his favorite cookies. Sitting together on the couch in the evening, holding hands. These things add up to a life.
Looking Forward
How much time do we have left? I don’t know. Nobody knows. But what we do know is that every day we’re given is a gift.
George sometimes says, “In the next life, I’ll marry you again.”
I answer, “In the next life, you’re learning to cook.”
We laugh.
The truth? If I could go back seventy years, I’d do everything exactly the same. Every fight, every tear, every hardship. Because all of it brought us here. Wrinkled, aching, slow, but together.
Last night George told me, “You know, Martha? We did pretty good.”
“Yes,” I said, squeezing his hand. “We really did.”
And that’s it. Seventy years of marriage summed up. We weren’t perfect. But we were together. And that was enough.
Now George is calling. He’s lost the remote again. I get up, laughing. My knees hurt, but it’s okay. George will help me.
We’re still taking care of each other. That’s what we do.
That’s love.
One Last Thing: I want to tell young couples something. Is your partner leaving socks on the floor driving you crazy right now? In fifty years, you’ll be grateful that they’re still leaving socks on the floor. Because it means they’re still there with you.
George’s socks are still on the living room floor. I look at them and smile. And I pick them up. I’ve been doing it for seventy years, but I’d gladly do it for seventy more.
Love isn’t grand gestures. Love is picking up each other’s socks, every day, every moment.
The End.
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