The Reagans: A Love Story

This isn’t the typical RWN post, but I just felt like I had to comment, at least once, on what a great couple Ron & Nancy Reagan were.

I mean, just go down the page and take a look at the pictures of the two of them together. They just looked so thrilled to be with each other…and they were.

Just read what Reagan had to say about their marriage in an old “60 Minutes” interview…

“Nancy’s power was the power of well, giving me a marriage that was like an adolescent’s dream of what marriage should be. Clark Gable had some words once, when he said there is nothing more wonderful for a man than to know as he approaches his own doorstep that someone on the other side of that door is listening for the sound of his footsteps.”

Reagan even wrote love letters to Nancy, so many that there were enough of them to fill a whole book. Here’s just a little sample from one of them that’ll give you an idea of how Ronald Reagan felt about his wife…

“You see I have this problem. I miss you when you first leave the room. I worry about you when you go out the front door. Now this isn’t good for me since my transplant. (you into my heart 29 years ago next March.) Without you there would be no sun, no moon, no stars. With you they are all out at the same time.”

It was obvious that Nancy felt the same way. You could tell just by the way she used to look up at him when he spoke back in the eighties, eyes wide-open and full of wonder, like she just couldn’t believe how lucky she was to be standing right there beside him.

Then when the Gipper got Alzheimer’s, Nancy stayed with him, looked after him the whole time, and that must have been just brutal. To be deeply in love with someone and watch them fade away a day at a time, slowly, cruelly, being robbed of every memory they ever had of their life, of their children, of you. To hang in there, to take care of your husband for 10 years under those circumstances, takes a lot of love and dedication.

Although Dutch, because of the Alzheimer’s, hadn’t been able to return his wife’s affection like he used to, somehow, someway, he managed to do it one last time Saturday just before he passed away…

“And as Nancy Reagan publicly showed her heartbreak, details of her final private moment with the love of her life were revealed last night as one of deep sorrow and miraculous surprise.

The former First Lady believes her long-suffering husband recognized her when he stared into her eyes for an instant before taking his last breath, his daughter Patti Davis writes.

“It was the greatest gift he could have given me,” the former First Lady told her family.

Sobbing, shaking and knowing death was imminent, she held her husband’s hand about 1 p.m. Saturday as he inhaled deeply and opened his eyes for the first time in five days.

While most thought Alzheimer’s disease had robbed former President Reagan of all his memory, the last look he gave his wife was one of deep acknowledgment, Davis writes for People magazine in its upcoming edition.

“At the last moment when his breathing told us this was it, he opened his eyes and looked straight at my mother. Eyes that had not opened for days did, and they weren’t chalky or vague,” Davis recalls. “They were clear and blue and full of life. If a death can be lovely, his was.”

Davis and her brother Ron were standing next to their father’s bed when the astonishing interchange between their parents took place.

“In his last moment he taught me that there is nothing stronger than love between two people, two souls,” Davis writes. “It was the last thing he could do to show my mother how entwined their souls are and it was everything.”

The former President died just before Michael Reagan entered his father’s room, but he said the look on Nancy Reagan’s face revealed she had been given a gift even as she began to mourn her loss.

“His last earthy look was at his wife, his next look was at the face of God,” Michael Reagan told People.”

One day, in a better place than this one, the two of them will be united again…

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