Some people achieve grand status by the time they become the eldest in a family. All I have done is by chance get to be the oldest in the family. I have no great accomplishments in my lifetime. The best thing I did was marry Joyce and live with her for 58 years. There are a few people (none I know personally) that were married longer, because both of them lived longer. I had always hoped I would die before Joyce, because I did not want to live without her. That ship has sailed, leaving me standing on the dock of the bay watching her ship sail away. It took me months to understand that Joyce’s passing first was the right thing to happen. She would have needed a lot of assistance to get by in her life. I do not need help at the moment and I pray that I never will. I do make mistakes that I would not have made in my prime, but that comes with age. With the two of us together, we were good; but either of us alone would be in the situation I am in, with no one to catch the other one’s error.
Joyce needed my help for everything in her last five years but cooking. I was her helper, but she still had remarkable cooking skills until the day before she passed away. Those years were some of my best years because I had the opportunity to pay her back for all she did for me. Of course those last 5 years couldn’t match the 53 years before them. Joyce was very smart; she always knew when someone was taking advantage of her, but her love for them kept her from shutting them out of her life.
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