I got married late in life but, in my case, it was well worth the wait. As I have told my wife on more than one occasion, I found someone who was one in a trillion. I can honestly say that, had I been lucky in no other respect (and I've been lucky in many respects), meeting and marrying her would and has made me the luckiest man in the world.
If marrying late (to be precise, at the age of 35) has given me any specific perspective on family life in general, it is the preciousness of time, which seems to get faster and fast as I get older. I'm 60 now, and have two granddaughters I'm looking forward to seeing this weekend. But, as I realize how few in number the years ahead of me are, it makes me all the more determined to make the most of weekends like this. That's how I've tried to approach every day of the nearly 25 years thus far that I've been married, and that's how I'll approach the rest of them.
So it would be impossible for me not to appreciate this piece in the New York Times, a dating profile that a dying woman wrote on behalf of her husband. No bitterness. No self-absorption. Just a deep and abiding gratitude for what she was given, and the wish that it will continue for the man with whom she has shared her life.
I'm not sure who is more remarkable, the husband or the wife. In any case, both of them give the rest of us something to live for: a deeper appreciation of time's limits on all of us, and the need to make all of the moments we have count as much as possible.
To both of them, thank you. And G-d bless you and your families.
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