The great romance

True love is forever and ever ........

MELISSA HIEBERT, STAFF

As I peer through the doorway of one of the rooms in Tuxedo Villa retirement community I am met by the sight of Joyce, 91, lounging in a recliner, and Art, 89, sitting in a wheelchair beside her. The pair, both previously widowed, allegedly met a few months ago and have been “going together” ever since.

The couple are holding hands and staring giddily into each other’s eyes, laughing at everything and nothing, like a couple of stoned teenagers.

I say, “Hello,” and sit down. They both say, “Hello,” back, but don’t take their eyes off one another. I tell them I am here because I am researching an article on love amongst the elderly, and was wondering if I can ask them a few questions. “Of course,” says Art, happy to have visitors, though he still doesn’t take his eyes off of her.

...

The year is 1937, and Leo McCarey releases a movie called Make Way For Tomorrow, a story about an elderly couple that are forced to move out of their house after running out of money, and in with their children. The movie begins with the children’s decision that Lucy, mother of five, will temporarily move into her son’s classy New York apartment with his socialite wife and their 17-year-old daughter, Lucy’s granddaughter.

Bark, Lucy’s husband, will go to live with one of his daughters and her out-of-work husband.

Lucy and Bark exchange an uncertain glance and grasp each other’s hands, uneasy about the decision, which will place them 300 miles apart.

“We just thought,” says Lucy carefully, so as not to appear ungrateful, “That no matter what happened, that we’d always . . . oh, never mind what we thought.”

“You’ll be together again soon, don’t worry,” promises the son. Their grip tightens.

...

“Hi, Grandma,” I say into the phone. “How are you?”

“Fine, Melissa,” she replies.

“It’s raining outside today, so I didn’t feel like going out anywhere.”

“Aw, that’s too bad,” I say, and we make small-talk for a few minutes, even though there isn’t much new to talk about. Ever since my grandpa died about five years ago, she calls my mom just about every night.

“So,” she begins, after we quickly run out of things to say. “What do you want to know?”

...

“Who are you again, dear?” asks Joyce. It was the third time she asked me in the last 20 minutes.

“That’s Melissa, darling,” says Art. “Remember?

She’s come to ask us questions about our ‘great romance,’” he says the words “great romance”

in a tone that is both playful and sarcastic, and I’m sure, just a little bit bitter.

“So, how did you two meet?” I ask to get the conversation started.

“Honestly, I don’t know what caused me . . . but you were walking down the aisle there, and something made me follow you,” said Art, talking to Joyce more than to me. “At my age, even the important things we forget, don’t we?”

“What?” says Joyce, who had either genuinely misheard, or had already mentally wandered off.

“Even important things we forget. She doesn’t remember enough to think of it as forgetting,” Art teases. Joyce has a fairly bad short-term memory problem.

“What??” she asks, again.

“Nothing, never mind.”

“There was a reason why I followed you, and we had coffee or something, something caused that all,” began Art again, “but I’ll be darned if I can remember. Oh, well.” They both laugh, and spend the next half an hour chatting about things that I found too boring to pay attention to. They didn’t break their gaze for more than two seconds at a time, and largely forgot I was there.

...

As the weeks and months go on, the living situation between Lucy and her son’s family grows increasingly tense. Rhoda, the granddaughter, refuses to bring her friends home because her grandmother will “talk their ear off.”

“It’s tough on all of us . . . even Grandma,” her mother consoles, insensible to the heartbreaking longing that rings through in Lucy’s voice every time she talks to Bark on the phone. Though she tries to convince her daughter, Anita is also losing her patience with her mother-in-law, who hangs around and “bothers” her bridge pupils (though they don’t seem to mind in the slightest).

Meanwhile, Bark chats with an elderly shopkeeper of a local corner store, who amongst the children and the other "young" people is the only person who understands him. The shopkeeper tells Bark of a job he heard of that requires a man and his wife to be caretakers, but Bark dismisses it, saying that he doesn’t want to send his wife to work.

After Bark asks the shopkeeper to read a letter he recently received from Lucy in which Lucy describes a recent visit to Iydewild home for aged women (after a suggestion that she “meet women her own age”) as being a “dreadful place.” Bark reconsiders, and tells Lucy of his plan to get a job, so they can be together again.

...

It stinks like old people in here, and I am bored and want to leave. But I am not yet done exploiting these poor people’s emotions in the name of humanitarian journalism, so I plaster a smile on my face and sit patiently.

“So, what do you like about her?” I ask Art, trying to get the conversation back on track. Do I genuinely care about the answer? I’ll have to think about it later.

“She’s got a sense of humour, it doesn’t take very much to make her laugh,” says Art. “And she keeps telling me how smart a guy I am, and I am a glutton for the way she talks to me . . . I’ve had lots of practice in smiling lately . . . I’ve been chasing women, and I caught her!”

Joyce smiles shyly, and blushes.

“God, just look at that smile on her face,” he stares at her, lovingly, as she bashfully tucks her face into her shoulder.

...

“I met him, in 1947, at a dance. And uh, the rest is history,” my grandma begins, recalling how she met my grandpa in Codaire, Sask., 60 years earlier. Apparently, they met when she was still in high school; he drove a gravel truck at the time. After going together for three years, they were finally married in October 1951.

“So what was married life like, Grandma?”

“It was a busy time, it was good, we had all these kids, kept me busy,” she replied. “We didn’t have any money to start with . . . we both worked, until I got pregnant with [our first child]. . . we just did what most parents do . . . put the kids in the band, got them educated . . . we got through it all, anyway.”

But what was it really like, Grandma, being married for over 50 years? Did you just “love him,” or did you long for him? I wanted to ask. Were you passionate, or did the passion die out as soon when the kids were born? When he was away, did you yearn for his touch? Do you wish you hadn’t kept separate bedrooms for so long? How was the sex, Grandma, the sex!

Ew. Apparently people aren’t supposed to acknowledge family members as sexual beings, so instead I ask, “What was the best part of married life?”

“I think, the best part of married life was having the kids and being a mother, as far as I am concerned,” she replied. “And another part was, Gil was a very good man, he helped me a lot, and that was good, too. He was a good man.”

Good . . . in bed? OK, I’ll stop.

“I’m thinking about the hard times,” she continued, jarring my mind out from the gutter. “And how we really got through those first times, because, we had to be strong there, too, because we had these kids, and we didn’t have a lot of money, and I think we did quite well together. He was a very good manager, and we came out ahead . . . he left me very comfortable. I don’t have to worry about money.”

...

With her son and daughter-in-law out of the house for a moment, Lucy and her granddaughter sit in the living room, talking. Lucy tells her granddaughter that she won’t have to bother with her grandmother for much longer, as Bark plans on getting work and therefore she’ll soon be moving out.

"Why kid yourself, Grandma?" says Rhoda, frustrated. "You know grandpa is too old to find work. You're only fooling yourself. Why don't you face the facts?" she demands.

“Dear,” she says carefully, recognising her granddaughter’s comment stemmed from naiveté rather than malice. “When you’re 17, life is all parties and music and dancing. But when you’re 70, there aren’t any parties, you don’t care much for dancing, and about the only fun you have left is pretending that there aren’t any facts to face. So if you don’t mind, I’d like to just go on pretending.”

...

“How do you guys like living here?” I blurted out. I couldn’t hold it in anymore.

“I didn’t like it when I first came,” said Joyce. “Oh, it scared me, I didn’t like it.”

“Well, there are very few people that their families tell them that they should move into a place like this, and appreciate it. But I, I knew that some day I would have to. And I prepared myself,” said Art, dutifully.

“It’s not paradise or nothing. But this room is mine, up to the curtain,” he motions to his hospital-looking room. “And everything else, open to the public, is sort of mine. Nice flower gardens in the back.” He used to have beautiful flower gardens back at his home that he spent hours tending to.

“It’s 8 p.m., pill time.” A nurse walks invasively into the room. “Open up, open,” she almost forces Joyce’s mouth open, and drops some pills down her throat. “Thanks.”

“Oh yeah, and can you get someone back here to take care of this?” says Art, pointing to his slacks. The bulge of a catheter shows through his pants.

...

More time passes, and the couple’s living situations turn from bad to worse. Rhoda gets into trouble with the law, and her mother furiously blames Lucy for it. Cora, on the other hand, is tired of caring for her sickly father, and claims that the doctor told him that Bark should be shipped off to California to live with her other sister where there are no harsh winters.

Meanwhile, Lucy sifts through the mail, finds an envelope from the Idyewild home for the aged women, and realizes that her son plans to send her off to live there. However, just before he is about to break the news, she gracefully interrupts him and tells him that though she likes living with him, she would rather move into the home, where she can be with people her own age.

“Once I thought that your father and I would be together,” she explains, “But now. . .” she trails off, unable to go on pretending.

“But your father, he would never understand,” she says, firmly. “He thinks those places are simply dreadful. That is why he must never know. This is one thing that must be handled my way.”

“Oh, mother,” her son cries, in gratefulness and in guilt, as he embraces his mother, the women who bore him and cared for him, and still, despite how he’s treated her, still manages to love him and turn a blind eye to his egocentric ingratitude.

“And one other thing,” she says to her son, as if to thrust the knife of guilt just a little bit further. “Of all the children, I always liked you the best.”

...

“How was it when he was ill, Grandma?”

“It was bad. But there again, I had my family. Children, grandchildren, so we got through that OK. Actually, it was kind of like being in a fog. You don’t really think it’s real, at the time, and on the other hand, you do. And, you just get through it. And you get through after, and there’s a lot to do after too. And so there again, my faith helps, too. I didn’t take meds to cope, I just coped. But it wasn’t easy.”

I remember the last time my grandparents came to visit us in Winnipeg.

My grandfather was unusually quiet, and didn’t seem to be quite as “with it” as normal. We all thought that he might have had a mild stroke, but several weeks and numerous tests later, we found out he had a brain tumour the size of a tennis ball.

Eventually he was admitted to the cancer ward of the hospital for treatment, but his condition got worse and worse. Usually when we came to visit him, he would burst into tears and hug us, clutching onto his crucifix so tight that it left an indentation in his hand. Eventually, he started to hallucinate, and have terrible nightmares.

I remember my grandmother being considerably strong throughout the many months my grandpa was in the hospital, faithfully visiting

everyday and busying herself with errands, and remaining positive. Though, my mom told me later that a few times she would be washing dishes, completely fine, and then all of a sudden break down and start to sob, hysterically crying, “It isn’t fair! Why? Why does this have to happen?

It just isn’t fair!”

“And how was your wedding day, Grandma?” I can hear her voice breaking, and try to change the subject to something more cheerful.

“It was a nice day, Melissa. We had it in a hotel in Regina. The wedding was at a cathedral, the reception at the hotel. The only place we could afford to go on our honeymoon was Saskatoon. We stayed at what then was the nicest hotel in Saskatoon, called the Bestbar. I think it’s still there. . .”

...

“Stop looking at your watch,” Lucy scolds Bark, as they walk arm in arm through Central Park. Bark’s train leaves for California at 9 p.m., and they have only a few hours to spend together.

Time passes, and they both confide to each other that they wish they would have been better spouses, but eventually resolve to forget the should haves and just enjoys the time together as if they had all the time in the world to make up for it. Lucy worries that the kids, who are waiting for them, will be upset, but Bark insists that she mustn’t fret: “We’ve spent the last 50 years holding dinner for them, says Bark, indignantly. “They can hold supper this once for us!”

Eventually they resolve to blow off the dinner altogether, and visit the hotel that they spent their honeymoon at over 50 years ago. It is the first time they have been away from home together in the last 50 years, able to step out of the roles of “Mother” and “Father” for a moment, and into the roles of “people.”

A kind hotel owner offers them dinner and drinks on his tab, and they spend the remainder of the evening staring into each other’s eyes, holding hands, reflecting on their 50 years together, and reminding each other how much, even after all those years, they love one another.

“Remember that poem that you always liked,” asks Bark, “The one you had marked in the book with a rosebud? Or did the bank take that too?”

“They may have took the book,” says Lucy, with a loving smile, “But they could never take the poem.”

“A man and a maid,” she recites, from memory.

“Stand hand in hand, down by a wedding band.

Before them lay uncertain years, promised joy, maybe tears.

Is she afraid? Thought the man, of the maid.

‘Darling,’ he says, in a tender voice, ‘Do you regret your choice?’

‘We know not where the road will wind, or what strange byways we may find. Are you afraid?’ says the man, to the maid.

She raised her eyes, and spoke at last.

‘My dear,’ she said, the die have been cast, the vows have been spoken, the rice has been thrown, into the future we travel alone.’

‘With you,’ said the maid, ‘I’m not afraid.’

...

“Holding hands is how we spend most of the day, informs Art. “We don’t go dancing, we don’t go to the movies; we don’t do anything. We walk around in the garden once in awhile on a warm day.”

At the end of their lives, I think to myself, they will have spent the last days, weeks, and months (maybe years, if they’re lucky) staring into each other’s eyes, sharing a deep and complicated emotion, that only two people living in a place like this, forced to “face the facts” with grace and humility, could possibly begin to understand.

“She was sitting in that chair, the first couple of evenings, it took me and two women to get rid of her,” he said, staring at her, sympathetically.

“What are you talking about?”

“About you, going home from here, in the evening.”

“Oh, I don’t like that. It’s so dark.”

“I walk her home every night,” he says. “We hold hands, and go all the way to her place.”

I can imagine them holding onto each other’s hands as they head down the hallway towards the darkness, together. And though with every step, the darkness becomes nearer and nearer, as long as they can feel the hand of another, the warmth of a body right there beside them, they will not be afraid.

Joyce doesn’t know what day it is anymore, but she could care less. She can’t remember much of what he says I’m sure, only that Art is smart and that, for the time being, she loves him, and that she will hold onto his hand as long as she can until she has to make the inevitable trek back to her room in the dark, to sleep.

“I’m so lucky I met you,” says the maid, to the man.

...

“Do you miss him, Grandma?” a ridiculous question.

“Oh yeah, a lot, still. There’s kind of that continual void in your life, and you gotta fill it. And, that’s how you survive. Get involved in social activities . . . I have a lot of faith, and that helps, and good family, and that helps. And that’s kind of how you get through it. And live day-to-day.”

“Well, that’s all the questions I have for now, Grandma, thank you so much for answering them,” I say as mechanically as I would if I were conducting an interview with a complete stranger.

“Anytime. Just let me know if you think of anything else. Call me anytime. Goodbye.”

She hangs up the phone, and returns back to keeping busy indoors on a rainy day. My grandma,

now 75, lives alone in a tidy condo decorated with my grandpa’s woodcarvings and a magnet collection she kept of all the places they travelled to together. She is involved with the church, and goes on outings with the Red Hat Society. She is in good health, and thank God for that. My uncle and his wife and son live in Regina with her, but sometimes I think I see her even more than they do. But she keeps busy. She gets by. She survives. But sometimes, I wonder if that’s all she does; just survive, just keep busy, until one day, she can be together with my grandpa again.

...

“The time is nine o’clock,” warns the conductor of the band, and the pair leave the hotel and the past behind, and head to the train station.

“When I get a job out there, I will send for you,” Bark reassures her.

“Of course you will, darling.”

“But, In case I don’t see you again, because, you know, train accidents and stuff happen,” says Bark, simultaneously accepting and rejecting the “facts.” “It’s been nice knowing you, miss.”

“That’s the nicest speech I ever heard,” says Lucy, sincerely. “I’d sooner be your wife than anyone. And I just want you to know, that it’s been lovely, the whole 50 years.”

They kiss one last time, and Bark gets on the train. “Goodbye, my love,” she calls, as the train pulls away. She knows it will be the last time she will ever see him, forced to spend the rest of her days in Idyewild, surviving off of false hope and memories. “Goodbye,” she weeps, , as the song “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” plays in the background.

“Goodbye.”

...

“Bye, Grandpa,” I say to Art, my stepfather’s dad. “See you both again soon.” I won’t. I’ve only been once since he moved in, for an hour, on his 89th birthday. Will the guilt finally get to me this time and cause me to visit more often? Probably not. Instead, I will go out and get drunk, whine about how old I am (I’m 20), and contemplate whether next summer I should go to South Asia or Africa.

“Next time, don’t stay away so long,” he says, though we both know it will be awhile before I am back (if ever). I exit through the door and walk as fast as I can down the hallway, blowing past people creeping by in walkers, who eye me with resentment. I can leave; they can’t. There’s only one way out of this place for them, and it isn’t out the front door. I politely smile at them, inwardly hoping to God I die before I am 30.

...

McCarey’s movie flops at the box office. Theatregoers would rather watch dreamy love stories involving attractive young couples youthfully immortalized on the screen rather than movies that uncomfortably elicit feelings of guilt and arouse thoughts of one’s own mortality.

Though to this day, it is the only movie that at its conclusion has left me bawling uncontrollably.

But why? Was it because of guilt? Was it because it was quite possibly the most beautiful, honest love story ever written? Was it because I completely understand? Or, was it because, at my age, I couldn’t possibly understand?

As I leave the theatre, still sobbing like a fool, I remember the quote that flashed onscreen at the very beginning of the movie. Now, its meaning seems to make more sense:

“Life flies past us so swiftly that few of us pause to consider those who have lost the tempo of today, their laughter and their tears we do not even understand, for there is no magic that will draw together in perfect understanding, the aged and the young. There is a canyon between us, and the powerful gap is only bridged by the ancient words of a very wise man . . . Honour thy mother and thy father.”