Undying Love

Adults would say true love is undying. Given experience everyone, soon learns to appreciate what love truly is. When I was a little girl, I showered with love from my grandparents. They were my mother's parents. They taught me that no one should have to go through life not knowing the feelings of love, and they showed me just that.

I was six when I noticed how soft my grandpa would caress my grandma's hand and the look of adoration they would share. I knew it had to be love. I spent a lot of time with them, and they opened my mind to finding a love like that someday for myself. 

They would dine together, sit down and have long talks and they would laugh at fond memories. It was not until I was fourteen I sought the courage to ask about their love story. How long had they been together? To say that I was surprised away was an understatement. It was unique and special, and even after all these years, I still hold this story the closest to my heart. They told me Grandma was eighteen and Grandpa was nineteen when they knew one another. They have been together for sixty years.

Grandpa Peter was a gas station guard who worked the night shift and has been doing so for at least two years. He had only been nineteen at the time and trying to support his mother and the nine other brothers altogether. It left me stunned to know I have other grandpas too and quite a lot to spare. While walking home one night, his brother told him he found a girl and wanted to marry her. He had no money to get married but, he was willing to work hard for her. That left Grandpa Peter thinking he should be getting a girlfriend soon. He related that not long afterward how he was to move into Grove. It was a place more into another city than it was closer to home. He had to work at another facility to do maintenance and ground surveillance. When he was not working there at night, he was delivering mail during the day. The pay was comforting, and he soon found himself living quite well in a rented apartment not far from both his jobs. 

One day delivering the mail, he stopped at a house and noticed a girl not younger than eighteen. She was clearing weeds in front of a yellow house with a white picket fence and a sign that said beware the dogs. He immediately caught her attention as she did his. Even though he had watched, she looked nervously into the house. He could not pass the chance to speak with her. 

Blushingly, he introduced himself to her, and she did the same. He fell in love with her voice immediately. He had asked her last name, and she said to him, Maylene. Her name is Clarissa Maylene. That was the woman who would later be known to me as Grandma. 

Every day, he would stop by to talk with her just before getting along his way to work, and she would always seem to enjoy his company. She would even wait out for him too. She told me she would make sure to check the time and go out to see him off to work. With such small actions, she had felt her attraction towards him grow as much he visibly showed his. 

One Saturday, while he was off work at the post office, he had the whole day to himself. He decided to visit Grandma Clarissa’s family. They would not be kind to the idea that they would talk to one another and the family not know about it. He came knocking with his heart in his hand. He had said to me and waited patiently for someone to open up the door for him. 

Of course, her father had a rather stern look on his face greeted him with a curt good day. 

“Good day, sir. My name is Peter Wong, and I came here hoping to have a word with you.”

“Please, come inside. May I know what it would be about?” He asked, never taking his eyes off Grandpa Peter.

“I have noticed your daughter for a while now, and I think you should know I have spoken to her.”

“Okay. I assume this is going somewhere? What do you want?”

“I wish to court her. I have been talking with her for a few weeks. Given that I have a stable job, I could support her and all that she needs to be my wife.”

"I do not doubt you. You have a face of a hard worker. I would know. I was not always well off.”

“Do you agree to let us get married? Just like that?”

“Oh, you have got me mistaken. Do you wish to court? I do have some requirements.”

“Okay, what would they be?”

“I shall give you the option to court her given that every meeting you have with her, I would be there to watch you. After four years of courting her, and she agrees to marry you, then so be it.”

“Okay then, I shall see to it that I do not disappoint you. Or Clarissa. May I see her now?”

Her father, who Grandpa said was named Joseph, called for her and, she entered, looking scared to the bone. Grandma said she was scared to see him in her house. She knew she would not see him today because he has his day off. She began wondering why he was here. That was the moment her father spoke. 

“This young man wishes to court you. I have agreed to allow the courtship with your mother’s guidance and mine too.” Her father said to her. 

My grandmother was astonished to have him court her and possibly, marry her. She was not expecting such a response from him. 

The first year has gone by very quickly after that. My grandfather had found himself standing before Joseph once again. Today would mark the one year that he was courting her, and her father had summoned him to their house. Grandpa Peter knew that it was not something good. He went with a brave heart and held his breath until Joseph got a word out of his mouth. 

“I wish for you to write something for me. I wish for you to write my daughter a love letter. Do you prefer a normal letter?” Joseph said coolly.

Although Peter was not fully intelligent and did not go to school for a long time, he was not illiterate. He got a pen and paper to write on. Clarissa’s mother and herself were seated across from one another and her father at the table head. They all sat down with him. Clarissa's eyes held curiosity, her mother looked solemn, and her father had dark eyes on him that day. Knowing that he should write something from the heart, he wrote what my grandmother truly, meant to him. 

While sitting down to hear the story, my grandfather got up and entrusted me with a folded piece of paper with his written note to her after all those years. It has a faint date on it saying, January first nineteen forty. I stared at it in awe for a moment, wanting to cry. 

My grandmother had now continued with their story. She said during the same year, June, they both got married. The purpose of the letter was a test to make sure that Peter was a literate man. With that knowledge and the blessings of both parents. Clarissa and Peter tied the knot of commitment to one another forever.

Clarissa was always anxious at the thought of meeting Peter’s family. He had told her shortly after they were married they would want to see her. With that, they made plans to visit his side of the family. Bidding goodbye to her parents, she left with him and awaited the moment she would face nine other men whom she would be calling brothers in law and a mother-in-law who he had told her would be delighted he has found someone and one who is beautiful. With a determined mind to make sure that she everything that his mother would want in a woman for him, she promised to make sure that she would be her best self. 

Upon reaching the place, she saw how poor a family he had come from, and her heart shattered. He did not show how poor he was. Instead, he tried elevating himself. She would have never guessed this was his birthplace if he had not brought her here. He lived so well back at Grove.

His mother was just as he described her though she looked feeble. She moved briskly. She pulled Clarissa into a hug, and tears poured out. They sat down to eat dinner. Even though their portions were small, they did not mind at all. They were laughter and stories and playful banter. 

A week later, Peter came home from work and told her they were moving into their own home. He had given up his apartment at Grove, and they would move into a place called David Rose. He had a stash of cash hidden that he had saved up over the year. The house would be his present to her. 

Being only twenty years old, Peter was never out of ideas for a better future. He always aimed higher. He would always try to buy things for the house to furnish and comfort themselves. 

I looked at how wonderful they would be together while telling the story. I could not help but ask, what happened then? 

Grandmother told me, even though she was nineteen and she knew most things around the house, she took a local seamstress job to help Peter earn more for them to get by. It was that or sitting down to watch four walls all day long. The place was desolated and quiet most of the time. She welcomed it, but sometimes it got too silent to bear. 

She made quite the income with her intricate embroidery and new styles she would give back to the women who had given her a chance to show off her work of art. 

They, over the years, began to multiply. While at twenty-two, Grandma got pregnant with their first child, who later turned out to be my eldest uncle, Tony. Grandma and Grandpa had nine children in the years between their twenties and thirties. Of course, two of them did not survive birth, and seven remained. The second to the last child is my mother. 

Even though times were tough for them, they both told me, they never lost what they had for one another. It was their bond that took them through rough times, the rebellious teenage times with the children, the left lessons they would instill in their children, and the ever-constant sibling rivalry that often led to the rod not being spared.

After so long of being together, anyone would think nothing could go wrong. The children all grew and moved away, and the two lovers remained together as they were from the first moment they were married. They would each take a seat every day out on the front porch. Grandma wore her glasses down at her nose and working her fingers on her embroidery, and grandfather with his newspaper reading each page quietly. 

Like all good things, there must come a time to shed some bitter tears. That was the moment I heard that my grandfather was ill, and he does not seem recoverable. It broke my heart. The part that still pained me the most, I could not be there in time to say goodbye. He passed away in June 2020 through euthanasia. He had died the way he always was when he was alive. Peaceful. He was eighty years old. 

My grandmother would always pat my shoulders when I visit her, and moments of weakness to cry. She would tell me the love they have is undying. As long as someone knew how to love like them, they would always be alive through love. 

I have kept this story with me for over four years and thought it was time to share it with someone who might need to know and understand what undying love means. I could not be more thankful for both of them. They have given me what no other would have done and kept up for so many years. They had given me the hope to love someone.