Fifty years ago, Cindy and I promised each other we would be husband and wife for the rest of our lives. That’s what I mean. The hardest part wasn’t staying married. It was keeping each other alive. No, we haven’t fought life-threatening illnesses, except those that many of you have.

We’ve had surgeries, and Cindy survived COVID-19. I had a cold that year. We never had a time when it seemed like either of us would not survive. My parents and grandparents did not celebrate their fiftieth anniversary because they were not able to live that long.

Years ago, I watched an interview with a man on his one hundredth birthday. He was asked what he attributed his longevity to, and he responded, “I didn’t die.” That in itself is an accomplishment. Let’s chalk that one up to Cindy and I.

Another accomplishment is that we still love each other. Some marriages end prematurely because they stop trying to be in love. That is a misnomer, because all my faithful readers know, “Love is a verb.” I do not remember the first time I said that to her, but it was in the form of “I love you.”

We have often attempted to say this to each other over these fifty-plus years. Our first Christmas together was when Cindy turned sixteen. She was beautiful, and I wanted her to be mine. I may have tried to sing the song to her. If I did, she must have forgiven me for that. She knows I can’t carry a tune in a bucket.

We spent our first summer apart. I was in Pennsylvania, and she was chasing some guy that she and Debbie, her bridesmaid, thought looked like me, down Kearney Street. It wasn’t me, or I would not be writing this. No, I do not think she would have killed me, but she saw me get on the bus, and if I had not told her I was coming home, she probably would have ended the engagement.

We spent the next summer as husband and wife. That’s an interesting story that I’ve shared before. You can read that in “Doulos.” On our first anniversary, we lived in Joplin, in our third home together, and owned a dog. No, we did not get a dog to see if we wanted children. We got one because we wanted one. The same with the three kids. We had them because we wanted them, and discontinued birth control to make them possible.

We only have three because she started the pills again as soon as she could after each pregnancy. She may tell me I am wrong on the third. I can’t remember that far back. I mention this because this is another reason some do not stay together. They can’t agree whether they will have children or how many.

More than half of our grandchildren are over sixteen. None is married yet. We have no great-grands either. In this day, I must include that, or you may wonder. Life continues for all of us. We have been blessed to not have experienced any of those losses, either.

I do not mean that we have made it to perfection. We made it to our fiftieth anniversary date. Hopefully, we have a long way to go. We have three generations in our family. We are still a family. I believe that we are mostly functional. Pray that we are the people God wants us to be.

©Copyright 2026 by Charles Kensinger