Conjoining two lives later in life has brought surprises and new adventures

It is well known among the experienced that two people together can make up a bed more easily than one person working alone. There’s less of that trudging back and forth, round and return, tugging here, hauling there, struggling first with the bottom sheet and then working your way up layer by layer until — at last — you pull the bedspread taut. Whew.

So is that why I, a 90-year-old widower, and Pat, a widow at age 89, have conjoined our households so we can live together for the brief rest of our lives? Just to get the bed made?

No. This adventure at first seemed more like taking a little float trip on the serene Niagara River far, far above the Great Falls. Soon after meeting four years ago, we started by touring the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, first inspecting an elite 1929 Duesenberg Model J car, then moving through the Impressionist gallery and past the world’s absolute most entertaining mummy case, that of a lady named Meret-it-es who lived in 280 B.C. Finally that day, it was lunch at the Kansas City museum’s Rozzelle Court, with separate checks.

A week later we walked the Link together between Union Station and the Sheraton hotel, formerly the old Hyatt Regency and scene of the falling Skywalk that in 1981 killed 114 people. Pat was there that day. Five minutes before the crash, the Tea Dance floor had became crowded. Weary, she moved with friends to empty seats in a nook along the west wall. She came out without a scratch, a good omen, I thought, for someone who just might become a closer friend.

Through much of our acquaintance, Pat and I did not know we were “courting,” a state we had of course recognized with our previous spouses, both now long gone from the world. This time we were just “dating.” And the Niagara still only gently murmured, sweeping us grandly, slowly onward down its channel. What laggards we were! We needed six months to reach the state of hand-holding, more than a year to kiss. But it required only a fresh new Tea Dance in Meadowbrook Park Clubhouse to freshen our footwork and hasten the schedule.

Then it was Meet the Relatives Time. With Pat’s son, Jeff; her daughter-in-law, Laila; grandson Miles and his lovely girl, we enjoyed half a week of Chicago: the Art Institute with its impressive granite pharaohs, even its life-sized middle-aged mud man and wife. Because of the old boy’s pot belly, rather like my own, I liked them better than anything else.

Later, visiting my daughter Julie in her Florida kitchen, we passed my awe-stricken four adult grandchildren. They studied Pat and me as if Pharoah Ramesses II (I am obsessed with ancient history) had appeared with his bride. Just at that moment I happened to notice my daughter’s Amazon Echo Dot device on the kitchen cabinet. I spoke right out.

“Alexa, play ‘Fly Me to the Moon,’ with Frank Sinatra.”

Alexa played, Sinatra sang. I grabbed Pat, and we danced. She’s good, has been good ever since her experience long ago at the Hyatt. Pretty dang well, we danced. My daughter and the grandkids laughed insanely. Old Pharoah and his date were OK for a laugh, at least.

A few days earlier we had been entertained in a Florida coastal town by Pat’s much-loved niece, Louisa, and her husband, Gary. They drove us far out beyond the Intracoastal Waterway, out to the blazing blue, and I must say beautiful, Atlantic Ocean, seldom seen by me since I last crossed it on a troopship returning in 1958 from a tour to Europe as private first class in the U. S. Army.

With a stout west wind tangling our hair, we sat and talked for hours under their sunshade on a beach 3,845 nautical miles from London. That’s via Great Circle route — the shortest way, though it doesn’t seem so on our Mercator projection maps. That encounter with the global ocean gave us a useful sense of the world’s vastness that we don’t often perceive in Kansas.

Boldly, I waded into the surf to encounter sand grains rolling like a hundred million marbles under my bare feet. In 30 seconds I found myself on my back, had to be hauled up by our friends: Surprised me.

Yes, I am old. But just this once I dodged the role of tightwad. At our lunch restaurant, I sneaked my credit card into the waiter’s hand. Cost me $150!

Back home after our travels, I never did say, “Pat, will you move in with me? Become my housemate?” Instead, I began to mutter things like, “When we can live together.” … “After we move in together.” … “You know, living together like that, we could save some bucks.”

She seemed surprised but never did say,” In your dreams!” or “Shove off, buddy!”

So, at last, we reached the brink and right this minute are plunging down our Niagara of the move. We hired the Larson family, who advertise themselves as “junk removal.” First, they loaded everything Pat and I wanted from her home, then drove it to my house. They briefly stored it in my garage, hauled out the junk from mine, then topped off my home with choice items from Pat’s. $1,200 for the day’s work of three Larsons plus their truck. Not bad. Then we sat down with them, drank iced tea and gossiped far into the evening of that spring day. Fun.

That was two months ago. With boxes and crates and vases and pictures, plus Pat’s family heirloom English Haviland and French Limoge China still to set up or store, we’re only halfway down Niagara but full of hope we will hit bottom with a splash instead of a crash.

That’s all we needed to conjoin two old lives. Doesn’t it sound easy?

Contact the columnist at hammerc12@gmail.com.