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Imagine spending every single day of a week with someone you love. Sounds exciting, right? Curling up on the sofa to watch a movie in silence. Holding hands while inside the car or while walking together. Sweet kisses on the cheek and sleeping beside each other every night. The mere thought brings butterflies to your stomach and color to your cheeks. Now imagine doing that every single day for fifty years. Going through thick and thin together. Still staying even if it seems like the entire world is being laid down on your shoulders. Waking up to morning breath and wrinkles… Does it still seem as exciting as before? Will it bore you?

A true-blue romanticist, I tend to idealize romantic love into something incredibly grand – the perfect date, nightly conversations, kilig text messages, holding hands, kisses… I have Disney’s fairy tales, love songs, and romantic comedies to blame. I am guilty of committing the same act. Sadly, I’m not the only one. There are many who look at love like a page from a book or a work of art in the context that we tend to like it and look at it, but the moment that we can no longer appreciate it, we turn our backs and move to the next one.

However, we should understand that this definition of the word love is insufficient. The things I mentioned, they’re a part of it, but they’re not everything.

My maternal grandma and grandpa making their way to the altar

They say that true love lasts forever. My grandparents are testimonies to this statement. Why they just celebrated their golden wedding anniversary yesterday! In my mind, it puts many relationships of today’s youth to shame.

It’s hard to imagine staying with someone as long as my grandparents’ had. Standing beside each other for fifty, long years is an astonishing feat. Their marriage meant laughing at each other’s quirks and never getting tired of each other’s jokes for fifty years. It meant enduring five decades worth of each other’s presence – the same person, every single day. There may have been fights and huffs, but it also meant going back to the same person over and over again.

My family with the (re)newlyweds

But at the same time, it also feels wonderful knowing that long-term love is possible – that it can stand the test of time. That true love goes beyond white hair, knobby knees, and poor eyesight.

The entire clan

Photos taken by Kerrenkate Toyhacao

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 24th, 2010 at 4:50 pm and is filed under Reflections, Relationships. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.