I love stories like this:
Lifetime lovers Frank and Anita Milford have become Britain's longest-married living couple after celebrating their 78th wedding anniversary, newspapers reported.
[. . .]
Asked for the secret of their enduring union, Frank Milford, 98, a retired dock worker, was quoted in Wednesday's edition of the The Daily Telegraph as saying: "We don't always see eye to eye and we do have a small argument every day.
"But that comes and goes. We are always here for each other."
A few years after my father died, my mother said the thing she missed the most was just having him to talk to. He knew her life story, and she knew his. They were each other's biographers. I'd guess that Frank and Anita long ago passed the point where they worried about what the other thought if they discovered something embarrassing or shameful. They've had a very long time to live in the best kind of relationship, with no secrets.
The older I get, the more I value the people I've known the longest, even if there are gaps of several years when we don't see each other. They are both slow to judge me and quick to let me know when I'm full of crap. It is not healthy, no matter what some schools of therapy might preach, to reveal everything about yourself to everybody you meet. The more comfortable we feel with people, the more honest we are with them. Those who are very lucky are very honest with a few people, their true friends, and the most honest with the one person who will always say, and always want to hear, "We are always here for each other."
Let me give the last word to Roger Miller, a wonderful musician and songwriter who died too young, from a song he performed with Willie Nelson and Ray Price:
Old friends, looking up to watch a bird
Holding arms to climb a curb, old friends
Old friends, lord when all my work is done
Bless my life and grant me one, old friend
At least one, old friend
