She Lost Her Husband. I Lost My Wife. Now We’re a Couple. Love’s more complicated the second time around. The sweetness doesn’t erase the sorrow. The feelings coexist. We have each lost the love of our life. There’s no replacing that.
“It turns out that one key to aging is learning to live in a future you didn’t see coming,” writes Marty Goldensohn. (Christopher Pillitz via Getty Images)
Welcome back to Ancient Wisdom, our Sunday series in which writers over 70 tell us how they are aging gracefully. Last week, Julie Rose, 74, gave us the dos—and don’ts—of good grandparenting. This week, Marty Goldensohn, 78, describes the contentment that an elderly romance can bring.
A couple of years after my dear wife of 41 years passed away, an old friend of ours invited me to a comedy club on Manhattan’s East Side. At one point the comic asked his young audience to raise their hands if they were single. Many did. A widower at age 76, I hardly thought of myself as single, but I was no longer married, so obediently, I lifted my hand a few inches off the table. Instantly, the comic pointed right at me and asked, “What dating app do you use?” In a moment of defensive inspiration, I shot back, “Carbon dating.” I might have gotten the biggest laugh of the night.
But the evening was a serious rite of passage for me. I was grieving—I still am—but I began to accept that I was single again. Wary of having coffee with strange women I’d only met online, I avoided real dating apps like SilverSingles. My hair isn’t silver; it’s missing. Weeks later, when an opportunity arose to have lunch with a woman I didn’t know but who was close with my circle of friends, I let it happen. She had lost her husband too soon, 20 years back...
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