After 65 Years of Marriage, What Truly Matters

Can I just show you something? If you could just give me that shoe up there. This got washed up on the beach. It was such a gift, such a precious shoe. And heaven knows how all these bits of plastic and feathers, there's all sorts of things in it, got washed up. My walks on the beach, it restores my soul. It restores me. I feel very humbled by nature and the beauty around me. And to use my seeing of beauty and how to find its soul. We've been married for 65 years, Roger and I. And I think it was one of the best things I've ever done. He's wonderful, he's patient, he's kind, he's gentle. I just love him more each day. And grateful to him for his kindness and love. I mean, sometimes he irritates me. And I'm sure that without doubt I irritate him. But we've learned to adjust, you know. If I leave the butter out, say for a silly example, and Roger puts it in the fridge, and I've put it out because I want it to melt. I mean, silly little things like that sometimes happen. I don't think I get angry. I just take it out a bit earlier. Those sort of things don't matter anymore. We just fit in with each other. I think he tells me every single day, and I tell him every single day, that we love each other. He's my rock, my strength. When you've been married that long, we're part of each other. Like joined at the hip. I'm more aware of getting older. We've had a few accidents physically, and landed up in hospital on several occasions. I fell, and Roger had an operation. What it teaches me is to be grateful for every day that I don't have an accident. That I can just wake up in the morning and think I've been given a new day. And a precious day. I do remember being so aware of time. Because time was never promised to any of us. But I now think, I wonder how many sunrises I've still got to see. Siti Mazraya, she writes often about death and dying, and how you feel. And I read one of her poems, and I've written it down. And it says, I do not know how much time I have left in this world, but life has taught me something important. Stop counting the years, and start appreciating the moments. Every morning I wake up, it feels like a gift. Every breath I take is a reminder that I still have a chance to live. To love, to grow, and to be grateful. Those are very thought-provoking words for me. And very important and precious words. I think I'm so lucky to be alive. I think I'm blessed to be alive at this age. And lots of our friends have died. I mean, you can't say you're grateful you're still alive because they've died. But you know, you are grateful. It makes you more grateful that you are still here. And it makes you want to treasure every minute that you've got. Just ordinary moments are precious. So precious. I love the birds here because they've become my friends and they come to my morning restaurant. My favourites are the franklins. They're very polite little birds. And they come and I don't feed them until they say good morning. Good morning, good morning. Where are your friends? The others will come. Where are you? Probably about ten come. And they're very polite and they don't make a mess. They just eat their seed until they've had enough and then they go. That's a hard question. To ask me how I feel about the world today. Because there's so much ugliness and so much pain and so much wrong with the world today that I feel it very deeply. And that's one of my abilities when I walk in my garden. I can just saturate my soul with beauty. Feeling the joy in my heart of my environment. Living in the moment. And I think if you can try and focus in the beauty of this moment and the gratitude for being alive and being able to do it. Oh, I'm so grateful I'm alive. And I'm so grateful that I've got the ability to see beauty and to treasure it. I would like to choose to live with open hands and an open heart. To welcome joy and enjoy storms and to believe that life is fragile yet beautifully imperfect. I'm very aware of saying goodbye and I love you. Because having lost a child, it makes every goodbye hugely important and to tell people you love them. I know when Stephen died, all I wanted from everybody was just a hug. No words, no sympathy, no... So that's why I hug everybody that I love. And perhaps if I was young, I would be very self-conscious in doing that. But now, if I feel a love for a person, I say it and I mean it and I love them. When my time comes and I leave, I hope that I leave behind more kindness and more understanding than judgement and more love than I was given. None of us knows how long our journey will be, but we do know that today is ours. So I choose gratitude, not because life is always easy, because I'm still blessed to experience it. When my time here is over, I hope I leave with a heart full of gratitude for every sunrise, every lesson and every day that has turned out to be a gift.