Let Me Go

By Sam Szanto

My children want to sign me up to a dating site. I am standing outside my living room, holding a tray of coffee and cakes, listening to them discuss it.

‘In Bloom: a dating app for the over-50s,’ Bella says. ‘That sounds about right, doesn’t it?’

‘Better than Tinder, I guess,’ Mike says. ‘Are you sure about this?’

‘Of course I’m not sure. Matchmaking our father? Ever think we’d be doing that? But do you want him to be alone forever?’

‘He could meet someone naturally. Join a book group, go hiking, take up Zumba, meet someone in Sainsbury’s….’

I would never meet a woman in Sainsbury’s, I shop at Lidl. The book group is a good idea, but I’m too lazy to hike and what does Zumba entail, is it like belly dancing?

‘There’s no stigma to online dating now.’ The words are bees in Bella’s mouth. She is on several dating sites herself.

‘I’m not thinking about what his mates at the pub will say, Bell. What I’m worried about is that Dad isn’t over Mum. Let’s wait a few more years—’

‘He’s sixty-six, Mike,’ Bella says. ‘And Mum’s been dead for five years.’

A stroke from which Julia never recovered. Brushing my teeth in the bathroom, I heard a thud and found her on the floor. My friend Jim, who lost his wife to cancer, said it was good that I hadn’t had to see her suffer. Of course it was, but I also never had a chance to say goodbye or ‘I love you’.

When I open the door, Bella and Mike are bent over a smartphone and look up, startled.  I put the tray down on a nearby table, my hand in the small of my protesting back.

‘You think I’m desperate for a woman?’

‘Dad….’ Mike takes a coffee and blows on it. ‘We’re just worried about you. It might do you good to be meeting new people; just for friendship.’

‘The thing is, my loves, you don’t need to sign me up for In Bloom. I’ve already done it. What you could do is help me write a profile and take a photo. I can’t seem to get the hang of selfies.’

 

After takeaway and a bottle of wine, we do the photoshoot. Mike and Bella choose my clothes: a shirt the pale blue of a spring sky and a navy tie. On my first date with Julia, to see Back to the Future, I wore a pinstriped jacket, and she wore a red miniskirt. We’d met in the independent bookshop Julia owned, set up by my mum, who was a regular customer and thought the curly-haired, chatty woman who knew so much about literature would be a good match for her ‘bookworm of a son.’ Julia smiled with her eyes as well as her mouth. She was Roethke’s ideal woman—someone who was ‘lovely in her bones’. A year after meeting, we married. Mum got free books for the rest of her life.

I put on a CD and sit on the sofa, Bella and Mike bookending me. My arms touch theirs. The atmosphere is relaxed now that they understand I’m not annoyed by the dating site idea. In fact, they seem impressed that I’m ‘putting myself out there’, as Bella says, even though I signed up for the free option over a year ago without ever posting a profile and haven’t logged on since.

‘What do you want to say about yourself, Dad?’ Mike asks.

According to my children, my profile should incorporate my interests and passions. Which are what? I read books and newspapers voraciously; I play badminton with Jim once a week. On Sundays, I attend the church where Julia and I married, seeking meaning and comfort in the rituals. I volunteer at a homeless shelter on Saturdays and at Christmas. Occasionally I meet old friends at a pub; the friends are old in both senses now. My primary passion was Julia. But I’m pretty sure it’s wrong to mention your dead ex-wife in an online dating profile. What could I say to make myself more interesting, to make myself relevant? I feel like a song no one listens to anymore, a poem no one reads.

‘Haven’t a clue what to put,’ I admit.

My children craft a piece to sell me to the local ladies. John Oakley is described as a former police detective (Bella thinks it’ll make me sound like Inspector Morse, a lifelong bachelor). They also mention my love of literature (Mike deters Bella from mentioning my A grade in A-level English), sportiness (the badminton) and practicality (the homemade cakes). They are a good team, Mike steering Bella away from the rocks of fabrication into quasi-truths.

‘We need to choose a few words for the headline blurb now,’ Bella says. ‘To make you stand out.’

Bella has had limited success with online dating but perseveres. My beautiful intelligent daughter. Why is it so difficult for young people? Mike has a steady girlfriend, but she is ten years younger. She’s keen to travel the world, he’s keen on his career.

‘What sort of things should I say in the headline?’ I ask.

‘Handsome widower with two children, loves literature, looking for a meeting of minds.’ When Bella smiles, she looks like Julia.

‘Bit wordy,’ objects Mike, ‘let’s leave the children bit out.’

I shake my head. ‘Keep it. If these women aren’t interested in you, I’m not interested in them. It’s a brilliant profile, thank you.’

Actually we have created a cartoon me, someone trying too hard. I feel uncomfortable with my sixty-six years of life being abbreviated to appeal to strangers. What is brilliant is spending time together with these two, the laughter and intimacy it has brought to our sometimes awkward triangular relationship.

‘Can’t wait for the messages to flock in,’ Bella says. ‘You’ll be spoiled for choice.’

‘I’m sure you’ll get one or two interested,’ Mike says. ‘You’re not bad for an old codger. Let’s upload it for you.’

My children think that I can’t upload a profile onto a web page. They put up the photo, too. I took an Internet course at the library, so could have done both but it’s nice that they want to look after me, it fills a need in them. It would have made Julia happy.

‘When you do go on a date,’ Mike says, ‘tell me where and when, just to be safe. Lots of oddballs on dating sites, present company excepted.’

 

When Bella and Mike have gone, I slowly get ready for bed, time bending my thoughts backwards. Bed was my favorite place when Julia was alive, in the beginning for sex, but later for the togetherness. Every night, we’d read our books, commenting on exciting parts or explaining laughter, turning off the bedside lights at eleven. Every night, I spooned her, kissed her, and said ‘Goodnight, darling’. Every morning, her face was the first thing I saw. Five years gone, and the darkness on her side still saddens me.

Tonight, I miss Julia more than ever. I don’t believe I’ll connect with someone else like I did with her. No one else will have our shared knowledge, our jokes, our library of anecdotes. No one will love the kids like Julia. I don’t know how bereavement is for others. Jim and I reminisce about our wives, but rarely talk about feelings. My guess is he’s been beset by grief, stalked by it just like me. In the past five years, Julia has moved with me through life like a shadow.

I reach for the poetry book on the bedside table. I have been working through the books Julia left behind. There’s no way I’ll ever finish them all. The latest is a volume by Christina Rossetti. The next poem is ‘Let Me Go’. I read, ‘When I come to the end of the road and the sun has set for me, miss me a little but not too long and with your head bowed low, remember the love that we once shared, miss me but let me go.’ 

I’m not able to finish reading. And then, a wave of anger sweeps across me like a sandstorm. I want somewhere for this rage to go, but it blows back in my face. I smash my fist into the bedhead.

That night I barely sleep, a kaleidoscope of emotions swirling inside me, knuckles whining. In the morning, I open the curtains to a flat morning sky and take a deep breath.

I click on the In Bloom app. Scrolling through the possible matches, feeling as I used to when Julia sent me out to buy Christmas presents for the kids, I spot a couple of ladies who look attractive and sound interesting. Phyllida, sixty-one, divorced with two children, describes herself as ‘liking all the P’s: psychology, philosophy, puns and pubs.’ Lucinda, sixty-six, has one child, and is a university professor of Egyptology who enjoys badminton and eighties music. I write a different message to each.

 

The two messages result in two dates. Both are fine. We meet for coffee and have pleasant conversations. Neither woman seems to want to see me again, and that’s okay. It’s difficult to explain this to Bella and Mike, who are affronted for me. How does one explain a lack? They are not oddballs, just not for me and vice versa. Both seemed to be interviewing me. I thought Phyllida’s ‘Have you travelled alone to another country?’ was an interesting question – I answered no – until Lucinda asked the same one. Is there an online dating manual I should have read? By the end of the dates, my tongue felt sanded down with all the platitudes.

After the meeting with Lucinda, I turned to the Rossetti poem again: ‘I shall not see the shadows, I shall not fear the rain; I shall not hear the nightingale sing on as if in pain.’

The poem is a slice of light in the dimness. I take it as a message to do the things that Julia couldn’t. Be the things she couldn’t.

What would make me feel alive again? Mike mentioned joining a book group. A good idea… could I go one better?

I pick up my phone and visit Google. Find a list of English literature degrees.

Maybe I’ll be accepted into a university program. Maybe I won’t. If I am, perhaps I’ll enjoy it and maybe I won’t. There’s even the possibility I’ll meet a woman this way. But these things, at present, don’t matter. What matters is that I have come to a decision on my own. This time, I’ll fill out my own application.