08/29/2026
64 Years of Love …A Legacy That Death Cannot Take
On August 21, we said goodbye to my beautiful Nana, and somehow the world feels different without her in it.
There are losses that leave an empty chair, and then there are losses that leave an emptiness in the very fabric of a family. Nana was woven into ours. Her love, her presence, her memories, and the life she built with my Papa are part of who we are.
But in the middle of the heartbreak, I was given one of the most precious gifts of my life: the opportunity to sit beside my Papa, hold him close, and cry with him over the woman he loved for more than 64 years.
Sixty-four years.
A lifetime of mornings and goodnights. Raising a family. Working, sacrificing, laughing, disagreeing, forgiving, growing older, and continuing to choose one another through every season life brought them.
As I sat with my Papa and watched the tears fall from the eyes of this incredibly strong man, I realized I wasn’t simply witnessing grief. I was witnessing the evidence of a great love.
There is something breathtaking about loving another human being for so long that their presence becomes intertwined with your own. To build a life together for more than six decades and then somehow find the strength to remain standing when the person who shared that life with you is gone—that is a kind of courage I can barely put into words.
Papa, I saw your strength. I saw your broken heart. I felt it when we cried together. And I hope you know that in those tears, I saw something extraordinarily beautiful: a man still deeply in love with his wife.
Growing up with the privilege of watching the two of you gave me something no photograph, inheritance, or possession ever could. You showed me what a lifetime of love looks like.
Nana may have left this earth on August 21, but the love story the two of you wrote did not end that day. It lives in your children who are in heaven, your grandchildren, your family, your stories, your photographs, and in every person who was fortunate enough to witness the life you created together.
Someday, when people ask me what true love looks like, I will think of you and Nana. I will think of 64 years, tears and love.
