Couple shows their love every day

By GINA KINSLOW

GLASGOW — Norma Martin doesn’t need Valentines’ Day to show her husband how much she loves him.

She does it every day.

Norma, of Glasgow, visits with her husband, Gilbert, daily at NHC Healthcare. Gilbert has Alzheimer’s Disease and came to the nursing home to live two years ago when Norma found she could no longer care for him at home by herself.

“I stay every night until he goes to sleep,” she said.

Although he has had the disease for 10 years, his wife believes he recognizes her when she enters his room.

“Sometimes when I’ve been out and I come back in the room he will say ‘Hi, Babe.’ That’s what he always said when we were at home and he would come in. Sometimes he will look at me and say, ‘Where have you been?’” she said, adding he still knows family members’ faces and their voices.

In the beginning, when he first came to the nursing home, Norma would stay until 2 or 3 in the morning.

Family urged her to make her visits shorter.

“I said, ‘After 53 years where he is, that’s where home is,’” she said.

While she may not stay as long as she did at first, Norma still spends many hours at the nursing home. She may leave to have lunch with family or to run errands, but she has other family members come to stay with her husband while she is out.

“I want him, when he wakes up, to see a familiar face,” she said.

Norma and Gilbert began dating when she was just 14. He was 21 — something Norma’s parents weren’t too happy to hear.

“On the beginning I didn’t like him. I thought he was a smart aleck,” she said.

Norma worked at Cedric’s, a restaurant located in the Radio Court area of the Happy Valley community in Glasgow.

“He would come in and I thought he was a big smart alec because he liked to cut up, but once I got to know him I found he was the one of the nicest,

gentlest, friendliest, most courteous men I had ever met,” she said.

On their first date, he picked her up and took her to Cedric’s.

“That was our McDonalds. Everybody rode around there just like they do McDonalds now,” she said.

Gilbert had just purchased a portion of his father’s farm and was running low on cash.

“I didn’t know how broke he was,”she said.

At Cedric’s, Gilbert left the car to go inside to buy a cigar. Before leaving he asked Norma if there was anything she wanted. She told him she wouldn’t mind having a pack of gum. When he came back, he gave her the gum. He didn’t buy the cigar.

“I found out later he didn’t have enough money to get both,” she said.

She agreed later that night to go on a second date and said that was because Gilbert had proven to be such a gentleman.

The couple dated for three years before marrying on Dec. 19, 1954.

After marriage, Gilbert continued to put Norma’s wants and needs before his own.

When she was pregnant with their youngest child, in 1969, he spent money he had saved for two years to buy a piece of farming equipment on a window air conditioner to keep her cool. It was an exceptionally hot June and the family had no air conditioning. The baby was due in August.

“He waited another year-and-a-half before he got his piece of equipment,” she said. “I thought that was really sweet. That was the kind of man he was.”

He took her to Hawaii after having been married for 31 years because he knew she had always wanted to go. He showered her with gifts and momentos on birthdays and on Valentine’s Day.

“He showed in a lot of ways his love,” she said.

The couple operated the Colonial House restaurant in the Haywood community for 28 years. Gilbert was the main cook.

“He made some of the best pies you ever put in your mouth,” she said.

She realized something was wrong, that he possibly had Alzheimer’s, when he could no longer remember how to make mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese — dishes he had known how to make for years.

Norma cared for Gilbert at home for seven years until he could no longer walk. That’s when the decision was made to bring him to NHC.

The secret to having such a successful marriage, she said, is be sure to make up before sundown after an argument.

“I don’t think we went very many days without telling each other we loved each other,” she said.

On Christmas 2009, Norma gave her three children and nine grandchildren a poem she wrote titled “Hand in Hand.” In the poem, she says, “With my hand in his, I feel like I can conquer the world. I always feel deep inside. I sure am a lucky girl. After 55 years of marriage, I know we’re a lucky pair. Because when his hand touches mine, that feeling is still there.”

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