Unconditional Love Every Single Day

Unconditional Love Every Single Day

When I was thinking about our theme of Every Single Day, I wondered what would convey that feeling of endurance, of timelessness and yet be something of significance for me and for someone seeing it.

I remembered a photo that my brother Paul had taken of my parents watching the sunset at my sister’s house and I had my answer.

They met at age 18 and married at 22. They had been married 61 years when my father died of Alzheimer’s disease, aged 83. My mother lived another seven years and died last March just short of 90.

From the moment they met to their deaths not a single day passed that they did not believe that they had each married the perfect life partner.

Alzheimer’s took away my father’s ability to recognize my mother as his wife for the last five years of his life and yet he remained attached to her and would follow her around the house wherever she went. She cared for him until the disease made that impossible and he went into a small private nursing home.

This was the last photo of them together before he went to the home. For me it represents the last part of their long journey together, their lives mostly behind them, watching as the sunset announces the coming of night, still holding hands.