This past Friday morning I accompanied my mother to see my grandfather. We did some work around his house for him which included cleaning under and behind some heavy furniture. Although my grandmother passed away 8 years ago,he ran into a few things he still needed to go through but had evidently been putting off or just simply forgotten about.

My grandparents were married for over 50 years, meeting in high school and surviving years apart while he served in the Philippine Islands during World War II. Their love letters back and forth during that time period are sweet and moving. They were truly devoted to each other.

In the last years my grandmother's illness grew to the point that she needed constant care. He never wavered in his devotion to her. Even when she no longer realized who he was or really that he was there at all; he spent countless hours by her bedside. He tended to her every need - real or imagined. Not only was our family touched by his love and loyalty, but the nursing staff was as well. It was Nicholas Spark's The Notebook in true life.

I have always focused on what a great husband he was. I have always focused on his devotion to her. He set a high example for marriage and faithfulness. It is him I think about and look to as the strength of their relationship. He is the one that shines so brightly and he is the one who has set the standard.

But this past Friday I got a different glimpse. It really is one that I had known all along but it had crept into the back corners of my mind. As a grown woman I needed this reminder that came this past Friday. I pulled a heavy box out of the bottom of the closet and held it for my grandfather to look through. His hand immediately shot out and grabbed a small old fashioned memo pad. "Betty's diary!” he exclaimed.

He opened it up for me to see. She had written her name in the front along with the word “Private”. It was dated 1944. He opened to a page at random and let me read part of the short entry out loud before shutting it quickly. The entry was written while they were still in high school. He had walked her to school that day and she thought he was the most wonderful thing ever. He was emotional and set the diary aside. We finished looking through the box.

Before I left, he opened it again to a different entry and read the whole thing aloud. It was a description of a date and evening spent together in each other's company. I teased him a little and my Mom, me and him all shared a good laugh. I wanted to read more. I wanted to read the whole thing, but dared not force the issue. We left a short time later, but the two short diary entries had made an impact.

Those entries written by her hand were full of so much love and devotion. She loved him and admired him. He was truly the best man she had ever known and she was not ashamed to declare it. I knew she felt that way. I had seen it in her life, her actions and conversation all my life. Her long, slow sickness had made that memory fade though. His devotion was clear and crisp in my mind, but I needed that reminder of hers.

I needed that example of the wife's love. No wonder he was so devoted to her...how could he not be? How could he not be faithful in those last years when she had held him on a pedestal? She had recorded those thoughts and feelings as a ready reminder. Perhaps she had needed those reminders a time or two along the way or maybe not, but he held them in his fingertips and uttered them with his lips over 60 years later and they were as real as when she first wrote them. She left love letters and a diary declaring her never ending love for him and an example to me of a wife's complete and utter devotion to her husband. A wife so godly and devoted that on her deathbed she made her husband a hero.