Love After Loss

We didn’t think Randy’s mother would thrive or even survive when she was widowed. Larry and she had also been together since they were teens. She wasn’t eager to move into a senior living community, but we wanted her to be closer to us, so we insisted. It took months for her to go from resentful to enthused. She made friends and signed up for chair yoga, current events, and every museum outing. She dyed her hair red. She was an energetic dumpling zipping around on her walker, usually with a banana or two tucked inside the seat. (When we flew to Chicago for my stepdaughter’s wedding, Ruth was stopped going through security. A gun-like object had appeared in the seat of her walker: a banana.)
Then, over a hot bridge game, she met Otto, now 94 years old.
He’d had so many illnesses and operations that even he couldn’t believe he was still alive. “I have no organs left,” he said. “I’m held together by pills.” By then, Ruth was back and forth to hospitals with heart problems. But that failing heart adored Otto. At night they’d take turns visiting each other’s apartments and watch reruns of Hogan’s Heroes, sometimes The Carol Burnett Show....
Last December, when the doctor told Ruth that her heart had weakened, she said, “No more hospitals.” He explained that she would “most likely pass from this.” Her response: “I’ve led a blessed life. I’m ready to go home.”
Hospice care was set up in her apartment. The way she wanted. When we received the early morning call from an aide saying that Ruth’s pulse had stopped, that she was gone, we hurried over to find hospice workers waiting in her living room. But it was a sobbing Otto who was sitting by her bedside, watching over her, until Randy and I arrived.