My grandparents on my mother's side fought, often. Loud, screaming fights. Where one was silent, the other could talk for hours. Oil and water. They had two different rooms--one on the top floor of their home, one in the basement--where they would sit and watch their separate television shows on their separate televisions. They'd been together since they were sixteen.

Shortly after my grandfather passed away, we all went to visit my grandmother. My mother or one of the uncles made a comment at lunch about how they always fought. My grandmother had been smiling, but her smile faded. She turned to me and my boyfriend, at the time, and in hushed, deadly serious tones she said, "No one ever knows what goes on between a man and a woman but them. Remember that. No one can ever know how much you love one another. Love each other."

A few months later, her memory disappeared as she slipped into dementia. But she never forget my grandfather.

...And I never forget her.

Elder: Emmanuela

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