I just joined this forum, and the title says to introduce myself. O.K., I am an 83 year old curmudgeon (that means ornery old fart if you don't know what it means.) LOL
A bit about myself, this isn't ENTIRELY about sex, although it is involved. My wife of 34 years passed on 13 July 2016, we had been expecting it, as she had been handicapped since 2000 when she pinched a nerve in her neck reaching up into a cupboard, knocked her out, she sat down hard on the floor, compression fractured L1, L2, and L3 vertebra in her lower spine. That started the downward slide. Enough of the gory details. We had been together for 34 years, and never had a fight. Honest. Oh we had irritations, and the first time I said something that triggered an irritation in her, she reacted, and I said "Just how important is this going to be in five years?", and her response was classic "Oh it is damned important, I am never going to forgive you for it, and I am gonna get you for it." and be both started laughing. From then on that is how we handled irritations. We never went to bed mad or upset with each other.
Now for the better part. In May of 2016, she was hospitalized for three days with her heart. By this time she was almost totally blind - wet macular degeneration in both eyes, she could see a little out of the side of her left eye, had lost most of her hearing, and in August 2015 lost her balance, went down and broke her right thigh bone just below the socket.
Anyway, on Mother's day she was released from the hospital, her son and his girl friend came down to California from Oregon to visit his mom on Mother's day. I brought her home, and had to go shopping, didn't have food for four in the fridge. I was gone for about an hour, she was bedridden and sleeping, and her son and his partner had gone out visiting friends. Well, I thought she had been sleeping, turns out she was on the phone to a friend.
A month after she died, I get a phone call from her friend Janet, whom I knew also, living in Salinas CA, about an hour's drive south of the bay area, telling me she had a letter for me from my wife. She was in town visiting and brought the letter over, I fixed coffee and read the letter. We were both in tears when I finished, because in the letter my wife had said that she loved me, and how grateful she was that I had taken such good care of her in her handicapped condition, and that she didn't think I would do well without a woman in my life and that I should live with Marge. Marge is a friend of ours.
I called Marge, told her about the letter, scanned it and emailed a copy to her. Marge is Marge "Magic" Powers, has authored over 120 self-help and self-actualization books, some on Amazon, many of which I have edited - I used to work as a technical documentation consultant. Marge said "I will be down in the bay area in Sept., why don't we get together for dinner on the 8th and check this out?" I agreed, we communicated between July and Sept, daily, sometimes twice a day or more, and got closer and closer together in our understandings of each other.
Long story shortened, we got together for dinner, and it was an instant click. Magic is asleep in our bedroom now, we have been together since Sept. 2016, she moved in with me in July last year, and my wife was right, I don't do well without a woman in my life, and I have to admit I wouldn't have made a move on Marge without the push from my dead wife, although she is just as cute as can be, gorgeous actually.
It has been a fantastic two and three quarter years. Magic (this is what I call her, because she is magic, everything I have ever wanted in a partner, everything.)
An afterthought, as I was sitting at my dining room table on the 14th of July in 2016 thinking of all the things I was going to have to do to deal with her death, I felt a presence behind me, felt a hand on my shoulder, and without thinking said "I love you too" because the garage door was behind me, and every time she had gone out to do laundry or get something off the storage shelf back when she was mobile, when she came in, she would put her hand on my shoulder and say "I love you" if I were sitting there. The instant I said those words, I heard very clearly, as though she were standing right beside me "the pain is gone, I can see again, I can hear again, and I can walk again." My grief and guilt that maybe I could have done more to have made her life a little easier just literally exploded out of me.
My wife would have been 96 if August if she had lived. I was 80. Yes there were 15 years physical difference in our ages, and there was no difference in our ages.
If some one will tell me what it was that I did right, I promise, I will do it again. LOL
I have attached a couple of pictures, the first was my wife on the coast at Pigeon Point Lighthouse, California when she was 80, the second is Magic.
Thanks for reading.
