Encore, Love

There is nothing lonelier, yet more brimming with yearning hope, than Valentine’s Day at the retirement home. It’s equal parts resignation to what you lack, gratitude for what you have left, and an almost visceral longing for what can be, just one more time.

Garden Manor is one of the nicer requirement communities. There are no yellowing curtains or dirtied windows here, no pervasive smell of death, not even the antiseptic smell of hospital. On holidays, the staff does their best to make things bright. Christmastime brings in garland, Santa cutouts and menorahs, the Fourth of July, red, white and blue streamers, and on Valentine’s Day, cardboard hearts are taped on the windows, streamers hang from the ceiling, and breakfast today was heart-shaped pancakes. But, decorations can do only so much. Gilding a desiccated lily. Decorations brighten the outside, but inside, that visceral longing remains.

Today, that longing has a name: Maury.

But, I’m getting ahead of myself. I don’t have much left to give, but I have this story, so I want to do it right.

Anytime a new male resident arrives, most of the female residents try to win his heart. Most fail: say what you will about men, but are widowers are dedicated to their late wives eternally. They still believe that “til’ death do us part” works both ways.

Our resident ineligible bachelor, as he calls himself, is Sam. The day Sam arrived, he said “Ladies, I’ll dance with you — I still can, you know — I gave my hear to one woman, and that’s forever.”

The other night, I asked Sam whether he held out hope for love, whether he hoped his days could be filled with more than a quick dance. “I’m done with goodbyes”, he said. “I was going to die alone either way. Here at least, someone will find me before I start to stink.”

Not all of us are as ready to give up on romance. I still have hope. Before you picture images of Cocoon; wild, wrinkly sex, defibrillators on standby, that’s not what I mean. I was not that girl when I was young, and I’m certainly not that now. But I want to love and be loved, one more time.

So, that is where Maury came in. Maybe his arriving on Valentine’s Day was kismet. Maybe I was caught between the inspiration of heart-shaped pancakes, and the wake-up call of Sam’s heart-wrenching words. I just want connection. I’m not afraid of loss. I’m afraid of having nothing worth losing. I want to hold hands and share a sunset, our sunset.

The nurses walked him in and introduced him. New residents here all received the same welcome. My welcome here, 8 years ago, was no different. “Everyone, this is Hannah. She is our new resident. Everyone say ‘hi’ to Hannah and help her feel welcomed.”

“Hi, Hannah! Welcome to Garden Manor!”

It reminded me of when I was young and would start a new school. “This is Hannah and she will be your new classmate”, the teacher would announce, “Everyone say ‘hi’ to Hannah.” The class would stare, and I’d feel more a spectacle than welcomed.

So began Maury’s introduction to us. “Everyone, this is Maury. He is our new resident. Everyone say ‘hi’ to Maury and help him feel welcomed.”

“Hi Maury! Welcome to Gar — “

As we walked through our customary greeting, Maury waved his fingers in front of his chest in grand arcs, like a maestro conducting a symphony. As we hit “Gar — ”, he brought his hand up near his right ear and closed his fingers: the maestro’s signal to “stop.”

It’s fair to say that I liked Maury instantly. He wasn’t a looker, with his Einstein hair, his caterpillar eyebrows and flannel shirt, but he was sweet.

“Whadaya’ in for?”, he asked me, like an old prison movie. “The pot roast”, I answered.

It was half-true. My Henry did all the cooking. Sixty years of marriage, and I could count on one hand the times I’d cooked. “That’s I love about you, Hannah”, he’d say, “you only tried to poison me once.”

The first time I cooked for Henry, we were just starting out. I cooked a steak in the oven. It caught fire. I reached for a glass of water, but Henry — he always knew what to do — said you could only put out a grease fire with salt. So, he doused the flaming steak in an entire box of salt. Bless his heart, he ate it. Burned to a crisp, caked in an inch of salt, and he at it, because I made it. From that point on, Henry made all the meals. I think that’s what I miss the most: his cooking. We could go for dinners out, high-class restaurants or tiny cafes, but they never compared to Henry’s pot roast. There’s something about his cooking that nourished beyond the food on the plate. I always thought he was cooking for my heart, my stomach just got in the way.

Maury listened to this story and smiled. He told me how he’d cook for his wife and later their children, making omelets and pancakes in the morning, then oatmeal when his daughter hit her vegan phase. His wife passed away 5 years ago, and his children moved away. Now, he said, he’d perfected the meal for one. We talked all afternoon, lost in our comfy chairs, lost in each other’s stories.

Maury took my hand and raised it as if he was going to kiss it. Instead, he just held it, and said “Hannah, it’s been too long since you’ve had a real home cooked meal. Let me cook for you.”

I usually stick to the group meals here. Most of the residents here have small kitchens in their rooms, but I think I used my stove once, to make tea. I was not used to dinner for one, or two, for that matter. Yet there was something in Maury’s offer I could not refuse, especially when he told me his specialty, pot roast, just like my Henry.

Maury, still holding my hand, took me down the hall to his room, which was just doors way from mine. He hummed to himself while he cut potatoes and carrots and sliced steak. He put on some music, the classical station, and began conducting again, this time with one hand, as he used to other to pour wine into the pot.

The food was delectable, but bittersweet, the way that a taste of home makes you miss them a little bit less, before missing them a little bit more. I started to grow sad, and Maury noticed immediately, but he did not ask why, for he already knew.

“My wife, Mae, was sick for some time,” he began, “When she knew” — he did not have to what she knew — “she said, ‘I’m not going to tell you some fool advice like ‘love the way you loved me, because you won’t’. Maury paused, pain etched in his face, and resumed Mae’s words. “You’re too used to me, and I’m too used to you. But, when you have so much love left, you have to share it. It’s selfish not to, and Maury, you’re a stubborn old fool, but you’re not selfish.”

“She made me promise to hope,” he said. “She said there’d be music to hear, meals to taste, sunsets to see, and those are better shared.” So, that’s what I’m in for. To have one more shared song, one more shared meal, one more shared sunset, however many ‘one more’ the Lord allows me.

“Come”, he said, taking my hand and walking me to the terrace, “it’s getting dark soon, and you won’t want to miss this sunset.”

We have a lifetime before sunset, I thought, and many songs to hear. Once more, Maestro. Encore.