Photo of the Day: 6 Decades of Love

The Internet isn’t good only to dig up dirt on people and make the unlikeliest and most untalented people famous (I’m overgeneralizing, but bear with me). Every once in a while, some of the most beautiful things also come up online and go viral, daring to show us that beauty is not all lost.

Take the photo above, for instance. Click to see it in full.

Called simply “6 Decades of Love,” it’s now trending on imgur and it’s not hard to understand why: it’s the kind of photo that doesn’t need any explanation to tell a very touching story.

It’s actually a composite of two different photos, taken 6 decades apart, of the same couple: one shows the newlyweds on their wedding, while the other the old man on a hospital bed, gazing into the eyes of the woman he married for life.

Never before has the line “this is what I wish to be when I grow up” rang truer with me.