You’ve seen this gorgeous couple already.

They are my mother and father. Mom’s name was Mnostoula; Dad’s was Pete.

The picture was taken as they became engaged to be married. Dad had just returned from seeing horrifying combat as a U.S. Navy sailor. The bulk of his combat occurred in the Mediterranean theater. Mom was employed at a bank in Portland, Ore.

Today would have been their 70th wedding anniversary. Mom would be 93, Dad would be 95.

They never got to grow old together.

Mom was dealt a terrible hand. She was gone not long after her 61st birthday. She suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. We had it diagnosed in the spring of 1980, but in reality she was exhibiting symptoms long before the doctor delivered the grim news.

At the end, Mom couldn’t recognize anyone. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t feed or bathe herself.

Dad had died about four years earlier. He decided to take some customers of his on a fishing trip to an inlet just north of Vancouver, British Columbia. Four of them — Dad and two of his customers and the driver of a small boat — were racing back to the lodge as the sun was setting. It was getting dark in the inlet.

They hit a log jam at high speed, flipping the boat. Two of the men survived; Dad and the boat driver did not.

He was just 59 years of age.

I think of them every day. I miss them every day.

I also wonder how they might have grown old. It’s only a theory, of course, as you can’t bring them back.

But my theory is that Mom likely would have grown old with grace and good humor. She used to recall with fondness her days as a young woman coming of age. She fancied herself as a jokester and the life of any gathering of her peers.

Dad was family oriented. His aging might have been more challenging. He loved being in the presence of my sisters and me — and our families. Dad was close to all of his six siblings and they would recall to me how — as the oldest of the brood — Dad became the family leader as all of them moved from New England to the Pacific Northwest in the late 1930s.

Well, you can’t go back.

They’ve been gone for well more than three decades. Their marriage lasted 34 years and ended the day Dad died in that senseless accident.

They would have turned 70 together today.

If only …