When we arrive, an elderly man greets us at the door. He stands straight and speaks kindly. He tells us his wife is very sick and he didn't know what else to do. He thought about taking her to the hospital himself, he says, but she's too weak to walk and too sick to sit in the waiting room.

She is too ill even to talk to us. I ask for her birthdate, her social security number, her doctor's name. He answers the questions. He can tell me what she's eaten, when her last bowel movement was, when he gave her medications. I suggest he may want to bring her Medicare card along and he fetches her purse and knows right where to find it.

The one thing he can't tell me is what medicine she is allergic to. He knows there is one, but he can't recall the name right now. But he does not ask her. She has Alzheimer's, he tells me. I suspect that even when she isn't sick, he still takes care of her.

I ask him to show me her medications, and he leads me to the kitchen where he opens a cabinet door above the stove. The shelves are full of pill bottles. He scans the neat rows and chooses one bottle, then another, then a third. He hands them to me, saying, "These are all of hers, I think." He inspects the shelves again to be sure. "Yes, just these three. The rest are for my cancer."

Later in the evening I find I'm still thinking about this man and his wife, about "in sickness and in health." About what it means to grow old together.

I tell Rob about it, and I tear up a little when I get to the part where the man tells me, The rest are for my cancer. I say, shaking my head, "I am just now starting to see what it's like to be old."

And we are but only beginning to understand what it means to grow old together. The pain of illness, the ache of nostalgia. The blessing of waking to another day, just to struggle through it. The helplessness of watching one another deteriorate. The underlying understanding of where it's all headed.

I think back to my last glimpse of the elderly couple as I left her hospital room. He was standing by her bedside, talking to the nurses on her behalf. Answering questions. Expressing concerns. Advocating for her.

The fierce devotion. The inspiring patience. The strong alliance of a lifelong friendship. The loving touch of his wrinkled hand smoothing her white hair. Yes, we are but only beginning to understand what it means to grow old together.