"Promise me you'll keep doing your work..."

 "Promise me you'll keep doing your work," Robert said, taking both my hands in his and pressing them to his heart, looking deeply into my eyes.

It was three years ago -- end of March 2008 -- and we had learned that his body was succumbing to multiple myeloma. There were treatments we could and would try, but this conversation marked the countdown to the end, as I think back on it.

He would have one more month of health -- fatigued, but able to live the way he loved -- going to his art studio to paint, dancing joyfully, and loving me as if his life depended on it (and maybe it did). Then, as treatments failed, his back fractured in multiple places. The extreme pain led him into another world -- a world where love was not enough to heal or even ease the physical, emotional, and spiritual pain. 

A world of preparing to die.

 "Promise me you'll keep doing your work..."

Our profound sexual connection had powered our relationship for our seven, soul-soaring years together. Neither of us had ever had a relationship as sexually exuberant or as emotionally satisfying! Professionally, our spicy hot afternoon delights propelled me to switch writing topics from health and fitness to senior sex. Better Than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk about Sex After Sixty celebrated our love affair. We married in 2006, the year the book came out.


We already knew that our love wasn't "forever" the way young people think of it. Besides being seniors, we had the challenge of Robert's diagnosis -- at that point -- of leukemia and lymphoma. Our wedding celebrated not only our love, but that six months of chemotherapy had sent Robert's cancer into remission. We were told we might have ten or more good years of health, a magical gift.

But we didn't have ten years -- we had two.

 "Promise me you'll keep doing your work..."

March 2011: Two countdowns shift in my mind. In August, I'll face the 3-year anniversary of Robert's death. (When does it get easier?) But before that, in June, I'll welcome a new book into the world -- Naked at Our Age: Talking Out Loud about Senior Sex -- the book I started working on with Robert. In fact, you'll see that he wrote part of the chapter, "Unlearning Our Upbringing: Men's Stories."

I think at our age, those of us who dare to live and love fully have this balancing act between the sweet surprises and rewards of living our dreams out loud and the inevitable losses. Robert gave me the right advice: "Promise me you'll keep doing your work." It sustains me and brings me great joy -- as does sharing it with you!

Dear John, I Love Jane: book review

 Dear John, I Love Jane -- isn't the title perfect? -- is a new anthology edited 

by Candace Walsh and Laura André (who happen to be a couple) and written by women who left their straight life/ relationships/ husbands because they fell in love with women. 



 

Candace Walsh and Laura André



Some always knew they were attracted to women, but bowed to society's norm and married men anyway. Others had no idea they could or would fall in love with a woman.

The stories are engrossing, well-crafted, intimate, and dramatic. I felt I was sitting in a room hearing these women's personal stories -- their conflicts, thrills, misgivings (sometimes), and declarations.

When Seal Press offered me this book to review, I emailed back,"I hope some of the stories highlight women over 50." I was surprised and pleased to learn that several of these authors are over 50, and in case you want to read their stories first--as I did--here are their names: Leigh Stuart, Sheila Smith, Susan Grier, Meredith Maran, Kami Day, Micki Grimland, and Katherine Briccetti.




Sheila Smith

  I loved many of the stories, including "Memoirs of a Wanton Prude" by Sheila Smith, who first fell in love with a woman at age 69. As a teen, she was taught that gays and lesbians were "Sick! Immoral! Perverted!" and she fought back her feelings until age 50. Still, she stayed with her husband, "reading lesbian books and [keeping] my feelngs about women under wraps. A divorce and a few years of solitude readied her to meet Diana, who taught her that "Lesbians are about intimacy": "It wasn't so much she wanted to go to bed with me; it was that she wanted to wake up with me."

  

One of the most moving stories to me was "The Right Fit" by Kami Day (also over 50), who was raised Mormon and was taught that "Heavenly Father had made one man whose penis would fit just perfectly inside my vagina," and that perfect fit would be revealed on her wedding night. It wasn't. But 15 years later, the perfect fit arrived: Michele. And 15 after that, they are still together, "using only about half the mattress in our double bed."

The writing is terrific -- often lyrical, sometimes funny, and full of surprises. For example:

Meredith Maran

• "I have always been far more turned on by our magical, slippery little orchid than by their -- what is that? A puppet? Some sort of sea creature?" (Veronica Masen)
• "My body has a need that's burning a hole through the mattress. My brain is hanging on for dear life to what remains of my heterosexuality." (Meredith Maran)
• "I had never imagined kissing another woman, but now I did, wanting to know the gentleness of soft skin, the taste of female, this female." (Susan Grier)
• "I had recurrent dreams of making out with Ellen DeGeneres in a rustic Spanish house in Santa Barbara." (Leigh Stuart)

 Dear John, I Love Jane is an important book. It is more than a lesbian anthology -- it's about women making choices at first that go counter to what they really want or need (and isn't that especially true of our age group?), then facing and accepting -- and being thrilled by! -- their true natures. It shows women's sexual fluidity in a way we seldom see or acknowledge.

When I was writing Naked at Our Age, several women over 50 sent me their stories about marrying men (some quite contently, others battling their nature) and in later life discovering love with another woman -- or wanting to experience sex with another woman and not yet putting it into action. If this book had been out then, I would have recommended it. I recommend it now!

Visit the Dear John, I Love Jane website here. Purchase on Amazon here.

As always, I welcome your comments.

Danny and Annie, "a beautiful song from a busted old radio"

"Listen, if we're going anywhere, we're going down the aisle, because I'm too tired, too sick, and too sore to do any other damn thing," Danny told Annie 27 years ago.

I love this story from StoryCorps. Danny and Annie are narrating their love story, and they sound just as romantic now as in the first bloom of their relationship. "It's like hearing a beautiful song from a busted old radio," Danny tells Annie about why he tells her he loves her every day. "Thanks for keeping the old radio around."

Listen to the whole 5:50 minutes -- but be prepared to cry half way through when you hear about Danny's illness, and at the end, when you read the final note on the video. I did.

As I've learned personally, when we love each other at our age, part of that loving is facing and accepting that one of us will lose the other. That's a strong reason for embracing each other as closely and lovingly as we can, while we can.

Thank you, AARP Blog for posting this video, and to StoryCorps for recording it.  I've listened to it three times in a row now -- let me know how you react to it.



Danny & Annie from StoryCorps on Vimeo.

Sex in Nursing Homes -- why not?

"Why is it so hard to remain sexually active in a nursing home?" Ira Rosofsky, psychologist in long-term care facilities, asks in "Sex Bans in Nursing Homes" in the Los Angeles Times, August 19, 2009. Rosofsky is the author of Nasty, Brutish, and Long: Adventures in Old Age and the World of Eldercare.

"Where is the law that says you check your rights and liberties at the nursing home door?" Rosfsky asks, then answers, "There is none that I know of. In fact, the law says you retain the right to a sex life wherever you reside."

Oh? It's not that the law or facility guidelines mention sex, but nursing home residents are guaranteed the right to "maintain [their] highest practicable physical, mental and psychosocial well-being," as well as "the right to privacy and the accommodation of personal needs," according to Rosofsky.


Then why aren't nursing home residents permitted enough privacy for self-pleasuring or coupling if they choose? Why can't they enjoy sex -- even solo sex -- without an aide or custodian walking in? Why can't they cuddle each other to sleep instead of taking a sedative? Why do few nursing homes have private spaces that residents can use, undisturbed by roommates or staff?

I participated in a panel discussion about senior sex in San Francisco a while back. One of the panelists, administrator of a forward-thinking nursing home, discussed frequent problems of the residents' family objecting to Grandma having sex with someone other than Grandpa (even if Grandpa is deceased). Then there's the issue of whether Grandma can indeed give consent if she has Alzheimer's. How does the nursing home know whether she is making an independent decision about whether to have sex with someone who is interested in having sex with her, even pursuing her?

These are issues to be examined carefully, permitting the resident utmost dignity, respect, safety, and independence.

One nursing home that stands out in this arena is the Hebrew Home at Riverdale in New York which has a Sexual Expression Policy "to recognize and protect the sexual rights of nursing home residents, while distinguishing between intimacy and sexually inappropriate behaviors."


Your comments?

Wedded at 93 and 89

"Each of us is living a lonely life. Why not get married?" Ebenezer Rose, 93, asked as he proposed to Monica Hayden, 89, reports Michael Laforgia in the Miami Herald. So they did.

Rose had been widowed for four years after 58 years of marriage; Hayden had survived two husbands. They had known each other through their church for 20 years, but only recently started keeping company.

As I start to heal after losing Robert ten months ago, I am struck by this story as a testament to the remarkable ability of the heart to heal after tremendous loss and open itself again to love. The story of Ebenezer Rose and Monica Hayden illustrates the power of love, whatever the age of the lovers, and the basic, human need for affection and intimacy.

Never too late for love: wedding couple aged 80 + 84

I was catching up on a week-old Sunday New York Times on my Kindle. I came upon the wedding announcements, which I usually skip -- when I spotted this one:

Anne Wallach, Gerald Maslon
... The bride, 80, is an author in New York... The bridegroom, 84, is a retired lawyer.

The couple met at Harvard in 1947, when they were both dating other people, whom they would later marry. The two couples stayed friends. Wallach was widowed in 2003; Maslon in 2005. Afterwards, they began dating. On May 1, 2009, they married.

Age is certainly no barrier to love. According to The New York Times,

Ms. Wallach said she still sees Mr. Maslon as he was when he was a law student — with dark hair and carrying a green book bag.

She says she wonders if he sees her in the same way and even addresses that thought in a novel she is writing: “Jack and I were young together. He’s always that boy in a tweed jacket swooping toward me on his bike. Am I a girl with a smooth face and long blonde hair to you, Jack?”

...
“She asks me that all the time,” he laughed. “Yeah, but I like her the way she is now.”

The Best Kind of "Family Values"

I'm proud of the California Supreme Court for overturning the ban on gay marriages on May 15, 2008. It's about time. When I see the images of committed couples -- especially older couples -- hugging and crying because they finally will have the rights the rest of us have had all along, I want to sing, cheer, yell, and dance my support.

Look, for example, at Del Martin, 83, and Phyllis Lyon, 79, who had been together for 51 years when they were married in San Francisco on Feb. 12, 2004, a marriage later declared invalid. Now they can remarry. So can Ellen Pontac and Shelly Bailes, who have been together for 34 years, and Mason Bowling, 61, and Patrick Fitzgerald, 58, together 30 years.

This is, finally, true separation of church and state. Religions are still free to take whatever stand they wish. According to the ruling, "no religion will be required to change its religious policies or practices with regard to same-sex couples, and no religious officiant will be required to solemnize a marriage in contravention of his or her religious beliefs." This is a civil matter. A matter of civil rights.

Two people fall in love, create a life together, stay in love, perhaps raise family together, and get old still loving each other. This, to me, is "family values" at its best.

I would love to hear from gay and lesbian couples over 50 who would like to share their stories and their comments. Please either post comments here or email me if you prefer.