This is Henry and Anne, walking down a street in New Orleans, sometime in the 1930s. He fell in love with her the first time he saw her, and wrote a letter home to his mother that he had met the girl he was going to marry. She told him to get a job and an education, and then they'd talk about marriage, so he courted her for seven years. He burned the love letters a year ago, at age 93, to protect the privacy of that great love. They were married for 65 years before Anne died; her last meal was a beer. Both of them plowed it plumb to the fence.

I knew them only when they were old. Henry held her hand and walked her through doors, saying, "Come on, Baby." When her cataracts made her nearly blind, he leaned close and told her which foods were on her plate. He held her hand for three days straight in the hospital. And that is love, pure, undiluted. I feel grateful to have witnessed such a great love, such a true marriage.

But oh, to be able to see them walking down a street in New Orleans, vital and gorgeous.