Growing Old Together...An Image of Old Love

This lovely image came in an email the other day, undeservedly associated with a rather crude joke. I was struck by the comfort expressed and by the similarity to my own bed and sleeping arrangements--the bed frame, the quilt, the shoes, the cat at the foot of the bed, the woman's foot exposed.... Put the dog on the floor, add bookcases along the walls, cover the man's foot--and the resemblance is remarkable.

One of the things I love most about being married to my husband is sharing a bed with him, going to sleep with his arm around me, content. Once in a while I will go to bed early to read and he will fall asleep downstairs on the sofa--he tires more easily and earlier in the evening since his strokes--and I feel very lonely in bed without him. When I wake and he's not beside me I creep downstairs to make sure that he is okay.

Perhaps it's easier to live without loving someone so wholeheartedly that you fear losing him as much as I fear losing my husband. I don't know. I do know that before I met him I was incredibly lonely, especially at night. Work and volunteer activities kept me busy during the day and most evenings, but going to sleep alone was becoming increasingly difficult. Often I slept on the couch, ignoring my empty bed and comfortless bedroom. About a month before we met I had experienced insomnia for the first time in my life and had gone to my physician, who prescribed valium to help me sleep. I no longer needed it after we developed such a strong love for one another.

We've been together for a little over three years now, so our love could be considered to be relatively new, but we both feel that we've been together for a long, long time--that our love is old, comfortable and comforting, just like the image of old love above. We just have to enjoy it while we can.