By Bob Stickley

There was once a couple — Lilly and Charles Thompson — who had been married for 60 years and said they had never been apart in all of their years of marriage.

Their son came to their farm home to visit one day and found his mother sitting on the porch swing crying. It was the swing grandpa had made.

They spent many hours on that old swing and when it got too cold to sit outside, they would go inside and sit in their rocking chairs — which were side by side in the living room.

As the son approached her, she said, “You know that for 60 years he has never gone to bed without telling me he loved me and today he became very ill and was taken to the hospital.”

Their son called the hospital only to learn he couldn’t see his dad as the doors were locked by 9 p.m. and it was already past that time.

The son called the nurse on the phone and spoke of his urgent message about his father.

She let him in to see his dad and he told the nurse their sad story and asked her to help him solve it.

The nurse led the phone for a minute and the next voice on the line was that of my grandpa’s calling to let her know he still loved her.

As I drove back to my grandma’s, I got out of my car and approached her house. I looked in the window and saw her rocking away with tears streaming down her cheeks.

Suddenly a beautiful smile came across her wrinkled face and it came on mine too.

So where did all those days disappear to from today’s society?

When young people marry today, a very big percentage of them don’t ever stay married three to four years and they’re divorced and looking for someone else. How sad that is.

Is it because they didn’t really understand love and the oath they took to God as they  repeated those vows — until death do us part.