How lucky. How very lucky. This is how an aged couple should feel after years of marriage. But many are bitter. Many haven't embraced in forever. Hands have become claws that scratch at one another---they are no longer for holding.

Dear Ethers, 

My grandparents met when they were 15 and 17 years old.  They are now 93 and 95.  Imagine.  That’s a long time to be with someone.  My grandfather was extraordinarily handsome.  My grandmother, though not as pretty in the face, was extremely attractive.  They dressed beautifully, went out with the chic crowd, and enjoyed a good martini.  My grandmother was a singer and was given a brilliant offer to go to Broadway.  My grandfather, a cartoonist, was asked to go to Hollywood to work for Disney.  Both had to give up their dreams to stay with each other because they felt it was unfair to make the other choose.  Foolish if you ask me, but those were the days of gallantry I suppose. 

My grandfather opened an advertising agency where he always drew his campaigns (it kept him artsy enough)and my grandmother had 3 sons—and she never stopped humming a tune.  If you asked them in their 30’s, 40’s, 50’s and 60’s if they were happy with their choice of not being rich or possibly famous, they would be smitten and say yes.  But now wizened and bitter, they have hated each other for at least 30 years.  

I have never known my grandmother to have ever slept in the same room as my grandfather and my grandmother dutifully cooks and cleans, but barely utters a word to him and leaves to play bridge with her girlfriends.  They constantly bring up old memories and argue and blame one another for their downfalls.  

My grandfather took to drawing celebrities (he is an amazing artist) and getting them autographed.  He has JFK, Babe Ruth, one of the Pope’s—you name it, he’s got it.  He’s worked years to make that collection.  When my grandmother is mad she tells him to “Go downstairs and trace something.”  And when he gets mad at her, he tells her that she’s never done a damned thing with her life.  I think he forgets that she ran his business (was his accountant) and raised his 3 boys.  

The irony is they look 20 years younger than they are and are (knock wood) in perfect health.  They drive, they live in their same house (no assisted living)—my grandfather plays rounds of golf on the weekends.    It’s like they are trying as hard as they can to beat the other one out from dying. Do you know how many widows would kill to have their husbands back from the dead and to be able to live their very last day with their partner?  Nope.  These two are so ungrateful.

When I asked my grandmother why she never divorced him, she said she felt it was too late.  Too late to leave and she felt too sorry for him.  He wouldn’t survive without her.   But I think she wouldn’t survive without him.  I don’t think she CAN remember life without him in it. 

They have never been warm and fuzzy people.  They’ve always been sharp, smart, kind but not empathetic.  I know they love me, but they are critical, never gave me gifts and when I stayed with them, were always trying to “improve” me.  I love them with all of my heart, but they always scare me.  They remind me of what could happen when love goes wrong.  When you stay with the wrong person and it becomes “too late.”  I think you become hardened, angry, critical, and your body can’t accept a hug because it hasn’t felt one in so long it’s forgotten the motion. 

I don’t know how much time I have left with them.  They live in Massachusetts and I see them maybe twice a year.  I smile when my grandmother tells me she loves “Sex and the City” or when my grandfather tells me he enjoys playing on the internet.  Can you imagine what these people have seen in their lifetime?  But, I’m afraid they can’t appreciate any of it.  All they can see is red.  Red for stealing each other’s lives.  They really are old dog’s that can’t be taught new tricks.  All that’s on their minds is what could have been. 

I look at English gent.  He has a beautiful face.  So did my grandfather.  I met him when he was a teenager.  So did my grandmother.  We gave up a lot to be together.  So did they.  And we aren’t even 60 and we already are seeing red.  I don’t want to see my hands, like my grandmother’s, filled with hose like veins sticking up from her flesh, clenching her fists while her diamond wedding ring glints in the light, furious. I don’t want to live with a man who is my roommate but also my gatekeeper from any other life. But, just like my grandmother, I can’t imagine life without him.  

Sometimes I see them, arms linked, walking down the street.   They have the same gait.  She’s speaking into his ear and he’s nodding.  And I know that they’d be dead long ago without each other.  Maybe it is the competitive fight that keeps them alive—but there is a lot of love and history too.  I wonder what my grandmother would have looked like on Broadway?  Her stage name was “Ethel Evans.”  And my grandfather?  What wonderful drawings he might have made with those talented hands.  But, then I wouldn’t be here to tell this tale.  For me, it worked out.  But for them—sometimes I wish they had parted ways and had their chance in the limelight instead of sitting in the dark grinding their teeth with anger.  I wonder who will go first—and whoever does, I know the other will, somewhere in their heart (as devastated as they will be) feel that once again, their show was stolen from them except this time they’ll have no one to be angry at any longer.

Dedicatedly yours,

—One of 365