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Oh, they say that I'm feeble with age, Maggie; my steps are much slower than then.
My face is a well written page, Maggie, and time all along was the pen.
Oh, they say that we've outlived our time, Maggie, as dated as songs that we've sung,
But to me, you're as fair as you were, Maggie, when you and I were young.
Grow old along with me. The best is yet to be.
This trope is when a romantic couple is depicted going on into their golden years. If mortality or mental illness is a theme, this is a sure recipe for tear jerkers aplenty.
May combine with Babies Ever After by also depicting their descendants, who are often numerous.
Compare December December Romance, wherein the couple meets in their senior years.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
Film
- Central to the plot of Up. The actual ageing and romance take place in the film's opening montage (as seen in the page image), but remain the driving force of the plot throughout the film.
- Away From Her
- Bicentennial Man. Though he doesn't physically age, Andrew does this with Portia. Eventually he even forces himself to grow old in appearance and become mortal so that he can die of old age alongside her.
- Used as Arc Words in the Christopher Nolan movie Inception... Due to the effects of Year Inside, Hour Outside two lovers do this while trapped within the dream world.
- The two main characters of The Notebook live together well into old age.
- In Don Juan DeMarco, the title character helps a therapist & his wife discover the possibilities for passion though their retirement years. Not a bad prospect!
Literature
- Raymond E. Feist likes to follow his characters and their romantic interests well into their twilight years, which leads to more than a few cases of this trope. See Jimmy the Hand/Duke James' death in The Serpentwar Saga.
- Near the end of Komarr, Ekaterin's Uncle is rather upset at his wife's close call, and Ekaterin is somewhat envious of a marriage that the participants regard as threatened with a premature end after a mere fifty years.
- Aral and Cordelia Vorkosigan in the same series lasted forty years before he died.
- Given that life expectancy in Panem had otherwise seemed to be very short, the epilogue to The Hunger Games had this subtext, although the trauma sustained by Katniss in particular is implied to be ever-present.
- Tommy and Tuppence, who over the course of five books go from "Bright Young Things" to grandparents.
Live-Action TV
- A possible version of reality in one episode of Farscape; a Reset Button ensured it didn't happen, at least not the way it's depicted.
- If you're talking about "The Locket", that wasn't a romantic relationship, though they did grow old together (and it is very strongly implied that they were in love.)
- On the series finale of Charmed, Piper and Leo travel to the future and meet themselves as an elderly couple. Grandma!Piper even had fresh- baked cookies ready for them in expectation of their meeting.
- Saturday Night Live ran a skit that poked fun at Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey when they were married and had a reality show, by showing what things might be like fifty years down the road. In short, Jessica was still a Brainless Beauty, but poor Nick needed to get his eyeballs replaced from rolling them so much over the years.
- On Scrubs, J.D. starts wondering what he and his new girlfriend will be like as they grow old together. Cue his Imagine Spot of the two of them sitting on the couch together as an elderly couple. Subverted when they take a picture and immediately remove their old age makeup. They set it up so if one of them died tragically the other could take comfort in the fake photo of them as an old couple.
- Friends While not actually shown Monica and Chandler promise they will do this.
Chandler: "You know what the worse part was? I got to see what my life would be like without you..please promise that you will never leave me, that we will grow old together, and be with each other for the rest of our lives."
Monica: "I promise."
- Doctor Who; in the afterward to the Melody Malone novel "The Angel's Kiss", Amy assured the Doctor that she and Rory met this fate after being Trapped in the Past by the Weeping Angels. Rory also sent a letter to his dad assuring him of the same thing in the mini-epilogue "P.S.".
Music
- Paul McCartney asks his lover if she'll stay with him in "When I'm Sixty-Four". The irony that Paul was in the middle of a nasty divorce from Heather Mills when he was 64 was lost on no-one.
- Ridiculed in "When You're Old And Gray" by Tom Lehrer.
While I still appreciate you
Let's find love while we may
Because I know I'll hate you
When you are old and gray
- The old music-hall song, "My Old Dutch":
We've been together now for forty years,
And it don't seem a day too much.
Oh, there ain't a lady living in the land
As I'd swap for my dear old Dutch.
- The old parlor song, "Silver Threads Among the Gold" (beloved of Warner Bros. cartoons):
Darling, we are growing old —
Silver threads among the gold
Shine upon my brow today;
Life is fading fast away;
But, my darling, you will be
Always young and fair to me,
- Ludo's song from their latest album, "Anything for You," invokes this:
Anything for you
All of this is true
But the best story that I could ever tell
Is the one where I am growing old with you.
- Title of one of the last songs John Lennon ever wrote. Sadly averted.
- Journey's song "After All these Years" is sung from the point of view of a fellow who is Happily Married and utterly delighted that he's had the chance to have a long life alongside his wife.
- The premise of Stan Rogers' "Forty-Five Years" from his debut album, "Fogarty's Cove".
I just want to hold you closer than I've ever held anyone before
You say you've been twice a wife and you're through with life
Oh, but honey, what the hell's it for?
After 23 years, you'd think I could find a way to let you know somehow
That I want to see your smiling face forty-five years from now.
- The Ringo Starr-George Harrison collaboration "Photograph", which became a major Tear Jerker when Ringo performed it at the Concert for George.
I can't get used to living here,
While my heart is broke, my tears I cried for you.
I want you here to have and hold,
As the years go by and we grow old and grey.
- Pearl Jam's "Just Breathe" is a moving reflection on the "mortality" version of this trope.
Mythology and Religion
Newspaper Comics
- The Pattersons in the epilogue to For Better or for Worse
- Subverted in a Garfield greeting card with a cover reading, "Come let us grow old together." and the words "You first." inside.
Poetry
- Darby and Joan, from a poem by Henry Woodfall published in 1735.
Old Darby, with Joan by his side
You've often regarded with wonder.
He's dropsical, she is sore-eyed
Yet they're ever uneasy asunder.
- Trope Namer is the Robert Browning poem "Rabbi Ben Ezra:"
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand
Who saith, "A whole I plann'd,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all nor be afraid!"
- Robert Burns's "John Anderson":
John Anderson, my jo, John,
When we were first acquent,
Your locks were like the raven,
Your bonnie brow was brent;
But now your brow is beld, John,
Your locks are like the snow;
But blessings on your frosty pow,
John Anderson, my jo!
Webcomics
Western Animation
- In The Simpsons, in the episode "Beware My Cheating Bart", when asked what his goal in life was, Homer replied without hesitation that he wanted to grow old with Marge and live long enough to "be one of those couples who just sit in the park holding hands".
- And in "Holidays of Future Passed", an episode that took place in the distant future, Homer and Marge do manage to grow old together.
Real Life
- Special mention goes to the couple that currently holds the record for the world's longest marriage (86 years!), Herbert and Zelmyra Fisher.
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