She was tired now. Her body had grown frail, her breaths slower with each passing hour. Yet her eyes still held the same light that had once caught his all those decades ago.

When he rose to call the doctor, she gently stopped him with a whisper:
“Don’t call the doctor. I want to fall asleep peacefully, with your hand in mine.”

So he sat beside her, their fingers intertwined, and began to talk. Not about illness, not about fear, but about the life they had lived together.

He reminded her of the day they first met, how nervous he was when he leaned in for that first kiss, how they laughed afterward like children discovering something sacred. She smiled through her exhaustion, the corners of her lips trembling but full of warmth.

They didn’t cry. There were no regrets between them. Only gratitude. Gratitude for the years they had shared, the storms they had weathered, the countless ordinary days that, together, had become extraordinary.

As her strength faded, she looked into his eyes and said it once more, as if sealing a promise beyond time itself:
“I love you forever.”

He leaned forward, kissed her softly on the forehead, and whispered back, “I love you forever.”

Her hand never left his. Slowly, peacefully, she closed her eyes and drifted into sleep, carrying his love with her until her very last breath.

In the silence that followed, he understood something with painful clarity: love is the only thing that truly matters. We arrive in this world with nothing but the capacity to love, and we leave with nothing but the love we’ve given and received.

Professions, careers, bank accounts, possessions — they are only tools, temporary distractions. None of them can cross that final threshold.

But love does.

So love, while you can. Love the people who truly love you. Love without hesitation, without pride, as if nothing else were more important in your life. Because in the end, nothing else is.