Writings

Love in Jamaica

By Linda Lovas (Hoeschler) Blyberg, May 17, 2023

If our Midwest winter hadn’t been so rotten, I wouldn’t have accepted the invitation from my late husband’s friend, Peter, to be his guest in Jamaica in March—a place I’d never visited. I’d have a wing in the rented cottage for a week; besides, the cousins of Peter’s late spouse would also be there.

So why was I having a stroke at 6AM, an hour before my son was to drive me to the airport? I texted my physician about my high blood pressure, asked if I should go to the ER, and thus delay my vacation. He called back and told my rather sheepish self that I was having a panic attack and should just get on the plane!

Me? At 78 I consider myself fairly worldly and sophisticated. During our 55-year marriage my husband, Jack, and I had been immersed in the arts and traveled extensively. I’d had a terrific work career.

However, in 2005 we suffered a high-impact highway collision in Sweden. Cramped in tourist class on the trans-Atlantic plane trip, Jack, a sizeable athlete, developed a deep-vein thrombosis (DVT), a life-threatening blood clot; as he exited the plane he complained of a sore hip.

The following day, twenty minutes from the Volvo factory where we took delivery of a new car, the clot and all hell broke loose: we hit a pillar at 60 MPH. Jack had massive brain injury and blood loss; I broke my sternum and back.

After six weeks in a Swedish hospital and aftercare, several surgeries for us both, I returned home with a different man. Jack was still passionate about learning and life, but often surprised his audience with unfiltered opinions, much like many stroke victims.

In relating to our two grandsons, however, Jack was near-perfect and excelled. They became his reason to live and thrive. Scholarly Papa read to them and tirelessly taught them at home or on trips; these boys became the legacy of this brilliant but wounded man.

When Jack got the 2021 diagnosis of advanced prostate cancer, he set a goal to live 6 years to see our elder grandson graduate from college, and the younger one, high school. As the cancer thrived, the goal was reduced to see the elder graduate from high school, the younger 8th grade. Sadly, even that objective was missed.

I devoted myself to Jack’s care throughout his 14-months of suffering, then death. We were as sweet and considerate and respectful of each other as we had ever been: we knew our love story would have a sad ending. In home hospice, our grandsons tenderly cared for Jack: washing him, lying with him, singing and playing the Bach Double on their violins. The night he died I thanked Jack and bade him farewell; within the hour he gracefully exited this life.

Nine months later I continued to get “back on the horse” and was doing quite well: going to arts events with friends or solo, traveling abroad with a girlfriend, planning other trips. During my grieving I also worked on a website honoring Jack and his many civic good deeds. I was pleased with my progress: re-engaging with a post-Covid, post-loss life, shedding objects and making choices for a widow’s satisfying old age.

But why had I panicked over the prospect of a week on the beach? En route Montego Bay I concluded that my apparent sophistication was a fine veneer over the “good” 1950’s Catholic girl whose virginity my father and nuns guarded until marriage at 22. Old tapes still played loud and clear.

Jamaica was truly lovely with beach walks and swims, meals with the intellectually stimulating cousins, heartfelt talks with Peter about our spouses’ exits and our “new” lives. Therapy—good therapy, since we were both part of a club we’d never applied to, one that can’t be understood until one becomes a reluctant member.

These healing talks were especially warm since Peter’s wife, Carol, was one of my good friends, just as Peter and Jack were the best of friends, rowing together at Georgetown on a championship crew in the early 1960’s. Jack and I sank roots in Minnesota, while Peter and Carol lived around the world. We kept in touch through letters, visits and crew reunions, as well as BWCA (Boundary Waters Canoe Area) trips that Jack organized for his rowing buddies.

I’d visited Carol in the hospital, then a year later Jack and I went to Maine where Peter tenderly cared for her during 19 months of home hospice. She died, then Jack became sick, and Peter became one of my sober, helpful death doulas.

When Jack died, one of his crew buddies remarked, a bit too quickly, “Now you and Peter can travel together.” His wife, overhearing the conversation, insisted that he call me back and apologize.

Three months after Jack’s death Peter was in Minnesota for the annual Georgetown canoe trip in the BWCA. As he was leaving for Maine, I casually (and somewhat nervously) suggested we think about traveling sometime, as pals. Peter seemed surprised and a bit discombobulated.

Over the next months Peter and I had random conversations via email, sometimes stilted, always non-committal. Peter said he wanted to respect my need to mourn (which I now know starts when one is given a fatal diagnosis). I thought that at age 79 he might no longer be interested in intimacy, so I stressed “pals.” Our dialogue was a seniors’ version of “Little Shop Around the Corner.”

Back to Jamaica. The cousins left for NYC, and Peter entered the living room where I had been napping, and said he wanted to talk to me about developing our relationship. I told him what I was willing to do: talk regularly, travel as pals, even travel as friends with benefits. But my list ended with the comment that what I really missed was being touched, being hugged—that was my problem with living alone.

Peter came over to the couch-perch from which I spoke (with more confidence than I felt), gathered me in his arms and gave me the most fabulous kiss. We combusted, startling ourselves with a joy that we never thought we’d have again…and that was it for the rest of the week.

But the nuns’ tapes played on.

I told Peter I was unwilling to live together. I was too old, too traditional to be anyone’s “significant other” or “my special friend.” Marriage or nothing further. If I had been nervous about visiting him, living together would have been genuine stroke material!

Peter asked me to marry him while swimming in Jamaica’s warm, crystalline waters. I told him he should think about all he would be giving up since I wouldn’t leave Minnesota with my 50+ years of friends, organizations, life, but especially, my precious teenage grandsons. His peripatetic life, with friends scattered around the world, made it easy to move again, he firmly stated. Two days later I said, “I will.”

I flew back to Minnesota, Peter, to Maine. We were to be apart for a month due to other commitments.

Peter wanted to marry soon: we were both breathless and quite desperate for each other. We tried to think straight. We talked about finances, about interests, about patterns.

Each day apart, after about an hour of “business” on the phone, we would babble on and off for a few hours. We kept our phones on at night, so we could hear each other’s breathing. We were crazy teenagers again, unabashedly silly. But so in love.

In my Emily Post mode, I said we could marry on my July 19 birthday, 13 months after Jack’s death. Then Peter mentioned a trip to Ireland he’d already committed to, the last two weeks of May.

“Hmmm”, I said, as one of a certain age, “but we need to be legally related to become the primary decision maker on any health care directives.” Peter said we should marry in early May when he’d planned to come to Minnesota.

I called Fr. Kevin McDonough, a friend of 30 years, who’d married, baptized and buried members of our family: a brilliant scholar and thoughtful counselor. He came to my home where I recounted a sanitized version of the Peter-Linda script. “Is this crazy,” I asked?

“Linda”, he said, “You’ve been mourning Jack for 18 years, since Sweden.” He then noted that he had May 4 and 5 available for a wedding! I chose Cinco de Mayo with Latin music (in our case, Brazilian, since mariachi bands had long been booked!).

We limited the wedding to two dozen family and friends: although our kids were with the program (they knew each other through family stories and occasional crew gatherings), our grandsons, especially our 14-year-old, thought it too soon to marry . . . if ever. Our daughter and her husband told their sons that the marriage was going to happen and we really wanted them present.

I wore my heart not only on my sleeve but in an all-over pattern of red, blue, green and yellow hearts on a black shirtwaist. Peter’s kiss was as passionate as that first kiss in Jamaica, but more chastely church-appropriate. We samba-ed down the aisle.

Our music-filled dinner reception at the American Swedish Institute was punctuated by emotional toasts by our kids, Jack’s siblings, and family friends. We had no formal dancing or Cole Porter songs, hallmarks of Jack and me, and possible painful reminders to my grandsons.

At the end of dinner I spontaneously began to dance with my grandsons, 14-year-old William, later joined by 18-year-old Jack.

After our trio hugged, William, uncoached, walked over to Peter and said, “You make my Nonna very happy. Thank you.”

Life can get better.