David McElroy

It’s easy to be cynical about love today. It’s easy to conclude that love can’t last. And then something comes along that makes you think maybe love can last — connection can last — until the very end. Just maybe.

Nine days ago, a woman posted this picture on Reddit. Her simple caption said, “My Grandma, 96, with my Grandpa, 100, hours before her death this weekend. 77 years of marriage.”

I don’t know where they lived or what their names are. I’m not sure that even matters. The story is universal. The desire to be loved is universal. The desire to have someone to hold onto — in honest connection — is universal.

Most marriages I see are pretty terrible. Most relationships I see are just as bad. Most people don’t know themselves and they don’t know each other. They marry the wrong person. They live entirely different lives that are connected only by children, if at all. And most of them refuse to do anything meaningful to end their misery and learn how to make better choices.

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I met Titus late Friday afternoon. He’s just 2 days old, but he’s already a miracle.

Titus is the first child of my neighbors, a young doctor and his wife, who’s a nurse. Even though they’re both in the medical profession and understand the process very clinically, it’s been obvious how their coming child was affecting them emotionally. They were excited and I’ve been excited to watch them go through it.

Jennifer wasn’t due to give birth until Sept. 9, but she told me weeks ago that she was certain the baby would be here by the end of August. She was right.

When I saw Ben Tuesday evening, he was carrying clothes to the car. He told me that Jennifer was already at the hospital and would be induced starting late that night, with delivery for sometime the next day. He was just grabbing a few things they might need. As I watched him drive off, I found myself feeling excited and nervous for them.

They came home sometime Thursday afternoon, but I didn’t see either of them until Ben was outside Friday afternoon when I pulled into my own driveway.

He told me Jennifer was fine and that it was a boy named Titus. (They had intentionally not known whether it was a boy or a girl.) Titus was in a window when I saw him. He had been placed into the sun’s rays for warmth.

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I lost my friend Charlotte Thursday evening. She was only 7 years old.

When a young feral cat gave birth to four tiny kittens seven years ago, Charlotte looked different from the beginning. It was hard to decide what color to call her. But however you described her, one thing was clear. Among the four little sisters, she was the alpha girl.

Charlotte was tiny but she was fearless. When the other cats would run or hide from unfamiliar things, she would stand her ground, typically looking on with a bored indifference that seemed to be her way of indicating lack of fear. Her only real enemy was the vacuum cleaner.

Before we knew she was a girl, an ex-girlfriend decided this kitten’s facial markings made the eyebrows look like those of a Vulcan from Star Trek, so she was initially known as Mr. Spock.

One of her sisters died very early. In the picture at the bottom of this article, they were about 6 weeks old. The gray one which was second from the left in that photo died shortly after the picture was taken. There was never any warning and I never knew the reason. The vet said it sometimes happens that there is something genetic wrong and it just catches up with them shortly after birth.

The remaining three girls seemed to love books — mostly for sleeping — so they were named for the writing Brontë sisters. As the alpha, the former Mr. Spock became Charlotte, the oldest Brontë sister. The gray one on the right in the photo was named Emily. The black one became Anne. Keep Reading