I wrote yesterday about how my relationship with Maria has deepened during the coronavirus Pandemic, and this morning, I found this beautiful, but melancholy message from Susan on my blog:
“Would that I still had my husband around. I read these loving tributes to husbands, wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, partners…and I’m envious. My husband and I had that love, that caring for one another, that sharing. It was gone in a short 6 months 8 years ago. Facebook reminds me every year, as if I need reminding, that although I still love what he was, I can no longer love what he is because he isn’t here. Cherish what you’ve found. I had hoped to find it a second time, but at 77, I think that maybe a fantasy.”
Susan is a lovely writer, and I imagine someone could fall in love just from reading that poignant but bleak message.
People often warn me to cherish what I have as if I need reminding.
There is a hopelessness to Susan’s message that I want to address with her. She has some good reasons for being pessimistic. Half of older men who are divorced or widowed re-marry. It is much harder for an older woman, only a quarter of them find another partner later in life.
The subject is close to my heart. Susan, I hope you don’t give up love.
I do know how you feel in some ways.
I was already in my sixties, living alone on a 90-acre farm, everyone but me saw that my marriage was collapsing. I was living in a remote village in upstate New York, the kind of place you would move if you never wanted to meet another partner again.
I know the odds favor older men, but there was no man less likely to find or be open to a relationship that I was, I was closed up tighter than a clam in a hurricane.
There were many more cows than people in my village, and lots of people who didn’t believe in dentistry. I expected to be loveless for the rest of my life; I was prepared for it.
I was also in the midst of a crack-up, depressed, and disintegrating. My closest and most intimate relationship in the world was with a workaholic border collie who hated to be touched or sleep in the same room with me.
I expected to die that way.
In that same town, I was stunned to meet Maria, she and her husband were working long and grueling hours restoring old farmhouses and selling them. She was skinny and bony as a neglected chicken, nearly mute and depressed. She and her wolf-dog hated men.
She wanted to be an artist and had given up hope just as I had. She liked my photographs and encouraged me to take them.
Of course, I fell in love, and I was so sure she could never love me, I couldn’t tell her how I felt for a couple of years. One day we were both divorced. We both fell in love with each other and began to help the other heal.
There was no place less likely to harbor my love than this tiny and forgotten town. And no person sicker and less open to it than me.
The odds are always long; they were for me; they are longer for you.
But I also learned that I found love once I was open to it, and not a day sooner.
There are lots of lonely and decent older men in the world; I run into them all the time. Twenty-five percent is not the best odds in the world, but 25 percent of single older men are still millions of men.
You might even decide to love and partner up with another woman; I can see you have a beautiful soul.
I don’t choose to live in the shadow of death and separation. I am grateful for Maria, but my eventual death is not the reason for that. It is my life.
We both respect life and accept it.
I’ve also learned that almost everything worth doing in life – being an author, having wonderful dogs, being in love, having a successful blog, taking photographs, living on a farm – is difficult, they are all things very few people get to do or think they can do.
I am surprised to find as I enter my seventh decade that all of the things I always wanted and truly wanted, I have, including love. The impossible is possible; dreams do come true, the will comes from inside, not in the stats of online dating services.
I know a lot of older couples who met recently and who love one another just as much as you and your husband. You haven’t asked for my advice, Susan, and I rarely offer it, but you did send me that letter.
Please don’t quit.
I will tell you something about aging, Susan, even though I am younger than you. There are two parts to it, there is the body, which slowly but inexorably declines, and the soul, which most often stays vibrant and very much alive.
I accept what happens to my body; I am very much in command of my soul. Of the two, it is by far the most powerful. Hope has an energy all of its own; it can pull love to people.
Getting older for me is not about what I am losing, but what I have gained.
In your last sentence, I hear the familiar and disheartening tone of old talk, the language of resignation that older people are taught to believe and speak.
We are not supposed to find love and meaning; we are supposed to fade into the background and leave the world as soon as possible.
Love is not a fantasy; it goes to the heart of the human condition. I hope you will look for it if you want it.
Humans are the only species of animals on the earth who can feel hope.
Don’t waste it. It very often works.
So happy for you and Maria. I love your writing and photography. I was on the path of religious life as a cloistered Carmelite nun but the universe had something else in mind for me. I met my husband at 40 and had given up. 18 years later we still can’t believe how much we’ve been given. Anyway, thank you for your books and sharing your journey.
Well said Jon , especially the part about accepting the “old talk.” I hope it is taken in the same vein as it was offered.
I loved your message that you wrote to Susan. I could have written almost the same words as she did so your comment spoke to me as well.
In these difficult times we all need to hear a voice of sanity, I’ve been a reader of your blog for many years and now more than ever as I read your reports on Andrew Cuomo I am also filled with great hope for our country, something that I have not have in the past few years and especially the last months. Thank you for sharing your experience, strength and hope.
I’m not sure it’s a good thing to answer sadness with our own stories of hope, but still we do it, with love and with hope it’s the right thing, that it might help. And because there’s so much we need to call to witness…
Divorced in 2020, the kids I had late in life all gone by 2013 (the last one lingered around to see me through chemo, set sail when she saw I was on my feet again), I moved into a “rough” neighborhood in the city and learned to fall in love again. But not with one person: I’d dated a bit, always such weirdness in it. I fell in love with the path beside the river, the old woman smoking on her porch at night who always called out blessings, the big sycamore trees, the people in my small Quaker community and the others their example put me in touch with, the sullen boys in hoodies who always, always responded to my greeting with “hello, ma’am,” something that never happened in the suburb I’d lived in.
Oh, and women friends! I’d neglected those, not realizing. Those, tended to, blossomed.
Then two years ago, going on three, a friend said I met this man, he’s nice, I think you two would get along. And we did, slowly, skeptically on my part, patient on his. I turned 70 in the arms of this love, while keeping all the other loves I’d learned to see and feel and welcome. Before, I couldn’t have done that, wouldn’t have done that.
Which is a long way around saying I hope you are surprised by love again, Maria.
Chris, I teared up reading your comment. It was heartwarming to read your eloquent description of falling in love with life, the life that was around you at the time. What a wise attitude and such good advice.
I, too, fought cancer in my late 60’s and am only 16 months out from treatment. My days now are never taken for granted because there are no guarantees of how many I’ll have. I hope to turn 70 this summer, enjoying and loving everything, good and bad, in each day.
Congratulations in finding a human love to fit into your big basket of loves. Enjoy!
Error in that post: should be “divorced in 2020.”
My husband came back to us and show me and my kids much love and apologize for all the pain he have bring to the family. we solved our issues, and we are even happier than before, i really appreciate all he did for me to get the man back to my life i will keep sharing more testimonies to people about your good work thank you once again. in case you are in any problem or sickness you contact Robinson buckler love for help he is always there in his temple to help you solve your problem Contact him now Email robinsonbucler @gmail com_________________________ ?????
I love that you answered me Jon and I do take it in the light it was given. You need to know that I am an upbeat, happy person, not sad or old at all. But at this time of year, the last two weeks of my husbands life until he died on May 10th, I have a slump, not a downward spiral, but a downward slump until May is over. We also almost had a 51st wedding anniversary on May 28th so the whole month of May is fraught with reminders.
I’m quite young at heart, have done the online dating thing for the last 6 years. Good men are few and far between and pretty much non existent in the small town in which I live. This is a couples, retirement town and as a widowed female, the fit isn’t great. I moved here from a much larger town, one my husband and I moved to after I retired. We had only lived there 7 years and I moved in Oct the year he died, 2012. It may have been a mistake to move to a small, touristy, artsy, boating community from a place that was large enough that I probably would have met someone by now.
But you and others should know that I’m actually okay with being alone, there are a lot of advantages to living by oneself with only a small, old dog. It’s the times like May, or the times I read about someone who really loves a partner that are lonely. Right now, Mr. Conway (dog name after Tim Conway’s old man), are going out for a walk in the fresh, sea air in beautiful Port Townsend.
Thank you for such a lovely response
Thanks Susan, for such a lovely message AND response. I love your writing, it is elegant and honest and deeply touching. Please stay in touch and thanks for existing..you sound quite wonderful..I think you will have whatever you want to have…
That is just beautiful Jon. At 79 and having lost my Beloved almost 4 years ago, I can certainly understand Susan’s feelings. But your reply to her is beautiful – thank you for sharing it with us.
This message really spoke to me. I am a woman self-described as 80 years young. Jon, what you said about body and soul really spoke to me with an immediate feeling of kinship. I was introduced to you by a friend who knew of my deep respect for Andrew Cuomo and sent me a link to your piece about him a week or so ago. Time has a way of hiding itself – I believe it was you who referred to yourself as an “Omar” and although I think of myself as a “Sowar” (Strong older woman at risk) I do kind of lose track of what day something happened. Anyway once I had finished reading I joined your list immediately and have been reading your thoughts daily.
I hope it’s OK that I am adding your words to my collection of “Words of wisdom” – “… getting older for me is not about what I am losing, but what I have gained.”
I met my soulmate at 52 years old. I was single most of my life. I know I met him because of our Creative Group at Bedlam Farm and witnessing your love of Maria through your years of writing. It kept my heart open and hopeful that I would find creative partnership and a soulmate. Thank you Jon. I wrote a bit about him today too??
Never give up on love!