There is a small idea called the potato shoe theory. It suggests that real love is not about sparkle or noise. It is about comfort and steadiness. It is about a natural fit that feels lived in and true. When I think about my life with my husband, that idea feels right. It feels like us.
From the beginning he was my comfort. My familiar place. He stepped into my joys as if they were his own. He listened with attention that made everything in my world feel lighter. He cared in simple and quiet ways. He supported anything that made me happy and he did it with a kind of ease that never asked for anything back.
He challenged me too. Not to shape me into someone new but to help me live more fully as myself. The strength and courage were already mine. I always had them. I always knew what I carried inside me. What he did was draw it out in a way that made it real in my everyday life. He made space for my voice. He encouraged my clarity. He walked beside me as I stepped into the confidence that was already waiting in me.
Life with him was peaceful and full. We had a way of being that did not need explanation. It was the kind of companionship that made ordinary days feel complete. Our story lived in the quiet places. In the gentle understanding. In the steady presence that grew into a life.
Then dementia arrived. Slowly at first. Then with more certainty. I watched the man who once held so much clarity begin to lose pieces he never meant to let go. And I stayed beside him wanting to return the steadiness he once gave me so naturally. Wanting to help him in the ways he helped me. Wanting to lift him the way he lifted me through so many seasons.
There is grief in not being able to protect him from this. A grief that sits deep and calm, like a tide that never fully goes out. But there is love that continues. Love that grows stronger in the care. Love that holds him through confusion and silence and change. Love that remembers the man he is even when he cannot find his way back to himself.
He was my potato shoes. The familiar comfort I could live my whole life in. And now I give back to him the same gentleness he once gave me.
This is the soft story of us. Honest. Lasting. Still ours.
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