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For most of her life, my mother wore a bracelet with a small bejeweled key charm on it. She wore it as a reminder of her belief that the key to life is love.

She must have said this to me hundreds of times when I was growing up, but it wasn’t easy to absorb as a young girl. The values of our society would have us believe that the key to life is accumulating wealth, living in the best place, having a fast car, obtaining an Ivy League education, climbing the ladder to a top job title, being physically fit and beautiful and having a wardrobe envied by others, finding a handsome spouse, and having brilliant children who will also grow up to have a life that represents all of these things. Oh, and try to accomplish it all at a young age as proof of how smart you are.

However, no matter what efforts we make to build up our lives, we are each alone, despite our efforts to prove we aren’t. We were designed that way: one body, one brain, one nervous system, and one heart. We’re born alone, and we die alone. As far as our existence goes, we might wonder, “What’s the point?” Is it to just gather what we can for ourselves until we run out of time?

If all I had to believe in was the harsh visible reality of this struggling world, it would be tough for me to find a purpose
for all of it. But something tells me that we human beings wouldn’t have stuck around for all these years if it were only about merely existing.

We aren’t just flesh and bones; we have a deeper existence, a purpose. It’s called love. If neuroscientists can’t pinpoint what creates the feeling of love in the body, then it seems to me that love must have its own source of creation. I call that God. And to me, God is love.

I believe love truly is the power that unlocks the door to everything. Love is the key. The rest is meaningless without it.

My mother had very little of what society would label “success.” She never graduated from college, she wore clothes she made herself, she had to relocate many, many times in her life, and she didn’t drive nice cars, go to spas, or have a safe full of precious jewelry.

Yet she had an undeniable wealth of character. My mother didn’t need a job title to feel worthy. She had self-worth, self-love, which first came from her trust in God.

She loved herself enough to make wise choices, which helped her to strive to live in light and in truth.

She had no codependency issues with anyone, including my father. She didn’t facilitate anyone’s weaknesses. She held each of us to a high standard, and we did our best to live up to her expectations.

She had her priorities in order. Her highest goal was always love, and she projected that to everyone she met, but mostly she gifted her nine children by being an example of unconditional love for us and my father.

My mother met my father in 1944 when he was newly discharged from the army. World War II was still in progress, and my mother was working as an efficiency clerk in the army’s general depot in Ogden, Utah. On their first date, they went to eat chow mein (my mother’s first taste of Chinese food) and then to an Abbott and Costello movie. The movie featured a song called “My Dreams Are Getting Better All the Time,” and she and my father picked up the words and harmonized together quickly a cappella as soon as they left the theater. They then went to hear Tommy Dorsey’s big band and danced on the patio under the stars. By the end of the evening, they were both smitten.

However, my father had to work so many jobs to support himself that my mother didn’t get to see him very often. My mother wrote this story in her journal describing their relationship:
“Occasionally, he would stop by when he was driving a taxi and sing a song or two as I played piano. Chills went up and down my spine hearing his voice. It was so beautiful and mellow. We went to a movie now and then and one night he told me that I was what he had been looking for. He said he wanted to marry me but he didn’t have enough money in the bank or a good enough job to take the responsibility, yet. I was totally in love. I didn’t care if he didn’t have any money.”

Love was the currency they started their marriage with, and love was the abundance that sustained their sixty years together. In the most difficult or trying passages of our lives, my parents always sang together and laughed together. The sound that comforted me the most as a little girl lying in bed at night
was hearing my parents together in the living room, reading jokes or funny poems to each other and laughing and laughing. They taught me that love is supposed to be joyful, and if it isn’t, then it’s not a relationship that can hold on through the tough times.

When my family did go through difficult and exhausting times, my parents would always find a way to bring light and hope to the situation.

In May of 1975, we were in the middle of a three-month tour. We had just left Mexico, where each of us had taken a turn being sick. My mother had fallen down some steps and hurt her knees, and everyone was feeling jet-lagged and overworked by the time we reached Paris, France. My mother wrote in her journal:

“
George and I had our daily checker game early this morning. He beat me as usual, so I threw a wet washcloth at him. He threw it back. That went on for a while. We laughed until we could hardly move. George was trying to get dressed but I had tied the legs of his pants in knots and stuffed his pockets with granola. He dumped my purse on the bed and mixed the contents with the granola. Jay was in our room and was laughing. Merrill heard the commotion, came over, and was laughing, too. I guess if we couldn’t have a little fun, we’d go berserk. Or, maybe it’s already happened. Ha!”

Like mother, like daughter. I can’t resist a good food fight with the love of my life. I had made a seven-layer Jell-O salad, one that the kids love because of the rainbow of colors. While we were putting away the leftovers, I took a handful and gave
Steve a surprise facial. He jumped up from his chair and grabbed some Jell-O from the pan and chased me around the dining table to return the favor. My kids sat wide-eyed, watching us play and laugh. It wasn’t something they were used to seeing while they were growing up before Steve and I got back together, but I could see by their faces that they loved the idea of their parents acting unpredictable for a couple of minutes. The next night, my son Brandon said to Steve, “Watch out, Dad. Mom made potato salad tonight.”

My parents individually brought new ideas into their marriage to keep it fresh. Mother thought they should both learn Spanish as she knew it was
“the language of the
future in the world,”
so they bought an audio course in 1984 and started to practice daily. My father built my mother desks and workstations for all of her various sewing and craft projects. He loved to bring home new foods to try. They drank soy milk hot chocolate long before most Americans had only heard the word “soy” with sauce. They would both go to the public library, where Mom would check out books and Dad would check out movies on video, and then they would compare notes on whatever they had learned. My mother wrote and bound cookbooks and got my father to sell them at the family’s Branson, Missouri, theater. They always had a new project, idea, or discovery that would capture their imaginations and send them off to research the possibilities.

My mother even had what she laughingly called her secret “backup plan” to keep my father interested. She had the habit of tucking small items she didn’t want to lose into the cleavage
of her chest. (Again, like mother, like daughter: It’s a habit I’ve inherited.) She called it her “chest of drawers.” Mother told me, later in life, that if she ever felt overlooked, all she had to do was tuck the television remote into her “chest of drawers,” and before long, Father would come find her.

By the beginning of 1982, all nine of us had grown up and moved away. My parents’ responsibility to raise, protect, and watch over their children in their home was over. I know quite a few marriages that have fallen apart once the children were grown and gone, mostly because the devotion was to the children and not to each other. When I was a single mother for four years, I could empathize with women who faced the challenge of maintaining the role of parent. It’s tempting to let your children become your whole life and relinquish the idea of having an adult relationship, especially when the one you left was damaging for you emotionally. When you don’t have a partner in your life, it’s easy to bond more tightly with your children. But it also puts more pressure on them. At one point, one of my grown children was worried about leaving home out of concern that I might not be okay on my own. I can understand how women might feel that they are only trying to fill in the gap for both parents in their children’s lives, but the children often interpret it as “My mother really needs me.” With the divorce rate at 50 percent now, the chances of children feeling this type of pressure are probably even greater.

We knew as children that our parents’ devotion was always to each other, first and foremost. As they aged, their relationship grew even stronger.

This is from a letter that my father wrote my mother on December 1, 1981:

“I am sure you are aware of it, but as a reminder, I state that this is our 37th anniversary of our marriage…of being together. 37 years of exciting, busy, happy hours all jammed into time. We could glance back on worry, stress, expectation and doubt, but why? Let’s take an eager look forward and hope that the Lord will permit us to continue on with our same bag of tricks: To stay close to our children and their loved ones, to maintain good health, to influence the lives of others for good, to be close to God and feel His love, and to know and enjoy our love for each other. You have helped me enjoy the simple things in this life, things such as: your warm smile, your acts of kindness, your positive outlook on life, your never-ending desire to teach and learn…I am sure you are an inspired person as you always come up with so many wonderful ideas. I feel a warmth in my heart every time I see you, my dear Olive Osmond, or even if I am in a place where you have been…. I love you so much. The only thing I do know is that it’s bigger than space.”

Their depth of love and commitment to each other is the reason I married my husband, Steve, in 1982 and the reason I married him again in 2011. Curious people have asked me in the last two years how I found the trust to marry Steve again, especially since I had had so much heartbreak as a young woman when we separated the first time. This is my answer: I had the example of true love from my parents. I know that a healthy marriage can weather all types of change because of
my parents’ example. I know that for all of their differences, my parents shared the one thing that mattered most: values.

My parents valued God first, then each other, and then family, in that order. As children, my brothers and I understood that we were created by love and were loved “bigger than space” as well, but that we were under the stewardship of our parents, not the other way around. We didn’t run their lives; they guided ours.

Steve and I share the same values. We value our God, each other, and our family, and my sweet husband loves the children, who now all call him “Dad,” in a way that is “bigger than space.” In so many ways, it’s as if we’ve never been apart.

My children understand, honor, and respect Steve’s and my relationship. I know I have an equal partnership built on the same respect and devotion my parents had for each other. And we have a mandatory kid-free date night every Friday to make sure we always make time for each other.

I look forward to being with my husband when life gets a little slower, and I’m excited at the possibility of feeling that fulfillment of love my mother wrote about in April of 1991:

“We spent some time with each member of our family and of course these times are the highlights of our lives. Our children all want us to stay with them and they do special little things for us to make us happy. What joy we have in our lives now, with our big family. As we grow older it seems that each day brings more and more blessings and we become more humble and appreciative for each and every one of them.”

An appreciation for the simple but fine things in life was
another aspect of love as “the key” to a good life that was mirrored to us by our parents. They encouraged us to surround ourselves only with people and possessions that were uplifting to our spirits.

My parents always said, “People are always saying ‘I’ll be happy when…’ There will always be something better than what you have. What’s important is to be happy and love what you have now.”

When I was about six years old, my mother bought a blue lead-crystal vase while we were on tour in Sweden. She kept it on the fireplace mantel wherever we lived. It was symbolic of one of her favorite stories, which she told us many times, and I have repeated it to my own children often.

This is the blue vase story, copied from my mother’s journal:

A shop owner in a small town noticed a certain man that would stop and admire the lovely blue vase in his store window each day as he went to work and as he came home. The man wore overalls and carried a lunch bucket, so the shop owner supposed that he worked at the local factory like many others who lived in the area.

Day after day the same thing happened. Then, one day, the man came into the store and purchased the blue vase.

“Sir,” the owner said, “forgive my curiosity, but I’ve watched you admiring this blue vase for a long time. What made you buy it today?”

The man said, “Well, I live alone in a small house. I’m not wealthy, but I value my life. I don’t think material things are all that important and yet, we are influenced and inspired if our surroundings are neat, clean, and lovely.

“I have only two paintings on my walls, but they are beautiful.

“My books are the best. They are uplifting and inspiring.

“I only listen to great music.

“I eat the best foods, fresh and wholesome.

“I choose my friends from the best people I meet, because they, too, influence my life.

“In other words, I want the best of everything that is possible in my life.