After Theresa lost her third husband, she had a conversation with God.

Theresa's God, she will tell you, is female.

By then Theresa was getting older, and she had begun thinking about what that might eventually mean. She had watched both of her parents experience problems with dementia or something similar, and she understood that independence—the thing she had guarded so carefully throughout her life—might someday become harder to maintain.

So she made a request.

What she needed now, she decided, was somebody who would take care of her if the time ever came when she needed taking care of.

Then Billy Graves came along.

"Boy, did I get the one that was going to take care of me," Theresa says.

She calls him a gem.

This might seem like an unusual arrangement for Theresa.

She has spent much of her life making it clear that she doesn't particularly want anyone taking charge of her.

She has a standard warning for husbands.

"I don't cook and I don't clean and don't ever tell me what to do and we'll get along just fine."

Bill, as it happens, likes to cook.

He likes to clean.

He likes to organize.

More importantly, he seems to understand the final part of Theresa's warning.

He doesn't tell her what to do.

That doesn't mean he doesn't tell her what he thinks.

There is a difference, and Theresa considers it important.

If she thinks Bill ought to consider doing something differently, she doesn't say, You need to do this.

That, she knows, won't work.

Instead, she might tell him that she recommends something he could think about.

Then Bill thinks about it.

He treats her much the same way.

For two people who value their independence, it seems to work remarkably well.

They met through the Redmond Senior Center, although the beginning of their relationship wasn't exactly straightforward.

Theresa was seeing another man at the time, in part because he was a good dancer. Another woman Theresa knew through line dancing was going out with Bill.

The four of them ended up going together to a dance at an assisted-living facility in Bend.

Somewhere along the way, Bill decided Theresa was "pretty hot."

The complication was that he was also dating the other woman.

Apparently dating both of them proved more than Bill wanted to manage.

He needed to make a decision.

Theresa wasn't going to make it for him.

"I'll give you plenty of time," she told him.

"You just go ahead and do it."

So Bill took the other woman to the beach.

The trip lasted one day.

According to Theresa, the woman tried to boss him around.

That was pretty much the end of that.

Bill came back with another problem.

The woman he'd been seeing had wanted to go to Las Vegas, and Bill had already planned the entire trip.

Plane tickets.

A place to stay.

Everything arranged.

Now he had a perfectly good Las Vegas vacation and nobody to go with.

Would Theresa be interested?

There wasn't much hesitation.

"Absolutely, let's go."

Theresa sometimes calls that trip their honeymoon, although they weren't married.

Not yet.

They went to Las Vegas and had a wonderful time.

After they returned, marriage came up. Theresa wasn't certain she wanted to marry again.

Bill suggested something else.

How about a commitment ceremony?

That suited them.

They held it in their backyard, surrounded by family and many of the people they knew from the Senior Center.

They made a commitment to each other without worrying too much about whether it looked exactly like somebody else's version.

That, too, seems very Theresa.

What matters most to Theresa when she talks about Bill isn't Las Vegas or the ceremony.

It's what happens on an ordinary bad afternoon.

She can come home from a difficult day at the Senior Center and tell Bill she's had a terrible time.

Then she'll tell him what's happened.

Sometimes she doesn't just want him to listen.

She wants ideas.

She tells him she needs recommendations because she's going bananas.

Bill listens.

Then he thinks.

Eventually he'll suggest something.

Often, Theresa says, he comes up with ideas she hadn't considered herself.

She thinks he's very intelligent.

Bill apparently hasn't always been so sure.

He once described himself to her as "just a little country bumpkin."

Theresa rejected that immediately.

What she saw was a man who actually listened when someone spoke. He didn't simply hear the words. He thought about what the person was saying and tried to understand what might be behind them.

Theresa recognized that quality because she values it herself.

She thinks.

Bill thinks.

And when something is troubling him, the arrangement works in the other direction. Theresa listens and offers ideas to him.

Neither one has to surrender the right to make the final decision.

They don't spend their days keeping track of each other.

They might tell one another what they expect to do that day, but plans are allowed to change.

People sometimes ask Theresa what Bill is doing at a particular moment.

"I have no idea what he's doing now," she'll tell them.

She may know two or three things he was thinking about doing.

Maybe he's doing one of them.

Maybe he isn't.

Bill is allowed to wander around.

Sometimes, apparently, he wanders to Walmart.

A lot.

Theresa says he can go there three times in a day.

She can barely stand going there at all.

That doesn't appear to present a marital crisis.

Bill can go to Walmart.

Theresa can stay out of Walmart.

Partnership doesn't require them to become the same person.

Theresa learned something about that a long time ago.

Her parents had divided their lives according to what each of them did well. Her father cooked. Her mother baked and handled the finances. Important decisions were made together.

Nobody sat young Theresa down and announced that this was how a marriage ought to work.

She simply watched them.

Years later, when asked what she had learned from her parents' marriage, the word that came to her was partnership.

Perhaps that helps explain what she values in Bill.

She doesn't want someone to run her life.

She doesn't particularly want to run his.

She wants somebody capable of standing beside her, thinking with her, helping when help is needed, and still leaving enough room for each of them to remain themselves.

And someday, perhaps, she may need more than that.

That was part of the request she made after losing her third husband.

She knew enough about her family history to understand that there might come a day when she would need someone she could trust to look after her.

So she asked for that person.

What she got was a man who cooks and cleans, who thinks before he speaks, who can offer advice without turning it into an order, and who doesn't seem to mind being married to a woman who begins the relationship by announcing that nobody is going to tell her what to do.

Theresa seems quite satisfied with the arrangement.

"I couldn't ask for anybody better," she says.

Maybe she already did.

Theresa has spent much of her life discovering that things seldom turn out exactly as expected. The frightened little girl who couldn't bring herself to pick up a dollar from the floor became a woman willing to step off a tour bus in an unfamiliar city and trust herself to find the way back. She helped young people discover what they were capable of, became a mother when she hadn't intended to, found love more than once, and learned that even her own mistakes could become the beginning of something better. Through it all, she has held to a simple belief: whatever circumstances life presents, there is usually something you can do with them.

These days, Theresa and Bill have a life that suits them. There are friends to visit, activities at the Senior Center, ordinary household routines, and the freedom for each of them to pursue whatever interests them. Theresa doesn't know what tomorrow will bring, and she doesn't particularly need to. She has often described life as a game of cards in which each morning brings a new hand. Some hands are better than others, and you don't get to choose the cards. What matters is what you do with them. Tomorrow morning, Theresa will have another hand to play, another day to live, and perhaps another problem worth solving. Whatever comes, she will approach it much as she always has—looking for the next step.

To continue click on the words "THERESA THORSON" after the words "POSTED-IN"