Love is all around

I am a sucker for romance and anything romantic moves me tremendously. Few days ago during one of our CNY visits, I heard a truly romantic story about a couple's love which moved me to tears.

E's maternal grandma is over 84 and has been suffering from Alzheimer's for 9 years now.

When I first met her in 2001, she was a really cheerful old lady with whole head of white hair and a cheeky grin on her face all the time. She could play the piano with her aged brother in law whom I could tell she was very fond of and when I heard her play that first time, I teared. She played by ear and never had any formal training and couldn't read the music scores. But to me, she played beautifully and looked like she had great pleasures from it.

Then, she could still remember her children and talked often, though repeatedly the same stuff about her life. Over the years, her memory got a lot worse and now she can't even remember the daughters who lived with her. She doesn't know their names and show no sign of recognition either, or I was told. 

She is well looked after and appears cheerful, but she doesn't talk anymore, at least I have not heard her say a word in my visits the last 2 years. Despite how her memory fails her now, there is one person in the world whom she still remembers and recognises whenever she looks at his photos - her late husband. 

Everyday she would tell her daughters when they are looking after her about how much he had loved her, what a wonderful man he was and that he made her so happy, but he is gone already... He passed away in 1998 and the following year, she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's.

I couldn't help but admire the kind of marriage they must had and how loved she must have felt throughout her life for him to be the only person she remembers and recognises now. If he was still around and healthier than she is now, I wonder what he would say to her to help jog her memory and what he would do to make her happy. 

I guess it is in a way, a great blessing, to have such beautiful memories to hold on to and accompany us as we walk our last leg of life's journey. To have a true love and a wonderful marriage of 60 years filled with love, are to me what most people seek, but few would find in their lifetimes. 

I am inspired and reminded, once again, of the possibility, however remote it might seem at times, that I could be one of those fortunate few who look back with a smile and contentment of my life filled with love and I could truly say that I have no regrets.