Looking for early photographs of my little brother, which is to say my younger brother, the one-time baby of the family of four siblings, I re-discovered our wedding album. It's over 60 years old now, and kind of falling apart. I keep all of our photograph albums embracing photographs we've taken over the years of our family, on a shelf in a black-lacquered Chinese court cupboard. There are a lot of them; both photographs and albums, and the shelf is stuffed.

Billy at age 5, ringbearer, June 1955

I keep meaning to look at them all and occasionally I'll take one of the albums out at random and leaf through them. That doesn't happen very often. But they're there, just in case I do want to heark back to those times. And perhaps sniffle a little. I'm induced to sniffle at this point because of the medical prognosis given to my brother. Quite hopeless. And he's quite a bit younger than me. I'm the oldest of the children born to our father and mother. He's younger than me by thirteen years.

I did find some photos of him when he was an infant, a very young boy and of course in his adult years. I also, as mentioned, re-discovered our wedding album. We had no wish for a formal wedding. We wanted to be married, to spend our lifetime together, of that we were absolutely certain. And we were impatient to begin doing just that. We'd met at age fourteen and from that time forward were always together, as much as we could be. My husband had to travel quite a distance from where his family lived to be with me, but we became inseparable.

We were eighteen when we married. We wanted to be married even earlier than that, but our parents wouldn't hear of it. Hardly surprising. We'd act no differently with our own children, although we were never faced with such a dilemma. We wanted our children to have complete opportunities to achieve academic credentials and embark on careers that would satisfy their future prospects before becoming tied down with marriage and family. But then what parents want is not necessarily what transpires, although they did all achieve careers related to their academic achievements. We never pressed our views on them, feeling they would make their own decisions in their own good time to benefit their futures. We hoped that guiding them by example and imbuing them with the values we held it would suffice. And as much as possible, that's just what happened.

I hated that album. I hated the way I looked. Neither of us wanted the pomp and ceremony of a conventional marriage. But our parents insisted on it. It was a kind of social event in the community, a form of pay-back to close friends and extended family; their turn to do the hosting. But looking at the photographs now, it's clear that though we reluctantly agreed to our parents' terms, both my husband and I, as the very young adults we were then, were deliriously happy to finally have our wish to be together forever on the journey through life, take place. At least initiated. The rest was up to us.

Now, looking at those photographs I see a young and handsome boy, radiant with happiness, and I feel that I have been the most fortunate person to ever have lived to have found him. I have lived in the years since with the most intelligent, interestingly intriguing and kindest man imaginable with wide-ranging interests and talents that never fail to surprise and impress me. Life has been an adventure of magnificent proportions alongside him.