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Oh, they say that I'm feeble with age, Maggie; my steps are much slower than then. —When You and I Were Young, Maggie, as performed by Kilbrannan (original lyrics by George Washington Johnson)
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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.
Compare December-December Romance, wherein the couple meets in their senior years.
Anime and Manga[]
- Pictured above: The ending of Fruits Basket shows Kyo and Tohru's granddaughter watching them, and the girl's mother (the wife of Tohru and Kyo's unnamed second son) comments on how lovey-dovey they are even now at their old ages.
- The Boys Love manga Future Lovers has a dream sequence in its final chapter featuring an elderly Akira and Kento. When Akira wakes up to find he's still young, Kento tells him "I have no intention of dying any time soon. You'll live to be a hundred and I'll be ninety-nine!"
- In Hetalia, the young French soldier whom France befriends discusses Who Wants to Live Forever? with his wife, and then finishes invoking the trope:
"You're right! Without this plain mortal body, I wouldn't be able to pursue my dream! To grow old together. Until our hands will be full of wrinkles." |
Film[]
- Central to the plot of Up: Carl and Ellie did manage to pull the trope plus Childhood Friend Romance, but Ellie died at the start of the movie and Carl heavily mourns her.
- Away From Her
- Bicentennial Man
- 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 his therapist (Marlon Brando) and his wife (Faye Dunaway) discover the possibilities for passion though their retirement years. Not a bad prospect!
- In Avengers: Endgame, Steve Rogers aka Captain America manages to pull this with his once-girlfriend Peggy Carter via returning the Infinity Stones and living out the rest of his days with her (and becoming her mysterious husband), so they can finally have the shared life that was denied to them.
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.
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.
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 |
- The old music-hall song, "My Old Dutch":
We've been together now for forty years, |
- The old parlor song, "Silver Threads Among the Gold" (beloved of Warner Bros. cartoons):
Darling, we are growing old -- |
- Ludo's song from their latest album, "Anything for You," invokes this:
Anything for 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 |
Newspaper Comics[]
- The Pattersons in the epilogue to For Better or For Worse
Poetry[]
- Darby and Joan, from a poem by Henry Woodfall published in 1735.
Old Darby, with Joan by his side |
- Trope Namer is the Robert Browning poem "Rabbi Ben Ezra:"
Grow old along with me! |
- Robert Burns's "John Anderson":
John Anderson, my jo, John, |
Video Games[]
- In Fire Emblem Fates, if the player has Azama and Effie hook up, his Love Confession to her begins as a Declaration of Protection and then goes into him saying that he wants to play the trope straight with her.
- In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Sylvain José Gautier tells Dorothea Aranult that he wants to win her heart while they're young so they can grow old together. According to their ending he has to try quite a bit to sway her, but when she finally accepts, they play the trope straight.