An 89-year-old man at the retirement home got down on one knee and asked me to marry him

long and fairly extraordinary life.

And one afternoon I asked him, as a joke, whether he would ever consider marrying again.

He straightened his shoulders. “I’m only eighty-nine. Give me a bit of time. You never know.”

We both laughed and I did not think about it again until the following Wednesday.

We had just finished the chess when Alwyn Creed stood up, put his hand in his coat pocket, and — with about four people trying to stop him — lowered himself onto one knee.

That room went completely silent. Every resident, every nurse, the girl doing the trolley.

And he looked up at me and said: “Will you marry me?”

I stood there like a post. I was certain it was another of his jokes.

And when I bent down to get him up, he put his hand on my arm and stopped me, and looked at me and said,