Retirement dating

Donna Freed ’s widowed father was catnip to single ladies

Love never dies

When my parents moved to Carol Woods, a North Carolina retirement community, it had a galvanising effect on the grumpy curmudgeons.

‘Your folks have breathed new life into this place!’ I was told at every turn on my first visit. Were these the same people I found cowering under a bare bulb, surrounded by boxes, the night before their move?

My mother was particularly fascinated by the dating scene. Most new arrivals were couples like my parents. By far the majority of single arrivals were women.

My father was deeply suspicious about this imbalance: ‘What did they do with all the husbands?’ he asked when each widow moved in.

Where others saw the statistical probability of women outliving their husbands, my father suspected conspiracy, or worse.

The arrival of a single man on campus was a big deal. ‘Those poor bachelors,’ my mother said. ‘They get eyed up like meat.’

Charming and sporty, Bob, one such bachelor, was snapped up. But he was soon back on the market, due to the sudden death of his girlfriend.

Up until an old football injury flared up, he had been a regular at the Saturday morning ping pong club. I was dragged along if I happened to visit on a Saturday.

It was supposed to be for fun but, like all the sports at Carol Woods, it had the ruthless quality of gladiatorial combat.

‘We’re a pretty determined lot,’ was my mother’s take on the general population or what she like to call ‘the inmates’.

On the phone, my mother was breathless from repressed gossip.

‘So, Bob from ping pong got a motorised scooter and the other night he had a date,’ she paused, as if this was noteworthy in itself. ‘They had a couple of drinks in his apartment and he wanted to give her a ride home. So he put her on his lap. Well, they crashed into a wall! He’s all banged up!’

When my mother suffered a

Springtime love: Donna’s parents, Ruth and Seymour Freed, c.1956

near-fatal aneurysm, the campus was updated daily on her progress through typed reports my father tacked to a board by the mailboxes.

It allowed him to focus on her care without repeating the same story to all the interested parties. It also advertised that he was a capable advocate and doting carer.

This was also abundantly clear during her final illness and ultimate death from Hodgkin lymphoma, aged 76, in 2009.

A week after her death, I accompanied my father on a road trip my parents had taken their first year at Carol Woods. It retraced their path through the Outer Banks of North Carolina to see the migrating birds heading south and returning from the Arctic Circle.

Aged 80 and having lost his wife of 53 years, my father pondered what he wanted for the rest of his life. ‘I think I have 5 more good years,’ he said.

He wanted to travel, visit museums, dine at nice restaurants and attend classical music concerts. He also wanted companionship.

‘Life is short,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to get married again but maybe I’ll get a girlfriend. I think it’s what your mother would have wanted.’

I wasn’t so sure she’d have agreed but life is indeed fleeting.

‘Do you have anyone in particular in mind?’ I asked.

‘Not really – all the women I know were your mother’s friends,’ he said. ‘Maybe Ursula, but I think she’s too old.’

Ursula was a spry 93. Next he proposed my mother’s closest friend, Nina, a lovely North Carolina native with a soft, lilting drawl. She was rejected on the grounds that she spoke so low my father couldn’t hear her. Finally, he settled on the most unlikely candidate of all, Irmgard, an Auschwitz survivor who had never married.

She only tolerated my father for my mother’s sake and because my mother had appointed him as Irmgard’s chauffeur. He ferried her to and from local errands and doctor’s appointments, for which she wasn’t exactly grateful.

She also didn’t trust his driving. With hands braced either side of her, she’d say, ‘Should we pull over?’ to wait out anything worse than a light drizzle.

‘But you don’t even like each other,’ I sputtered.

‘I like a challenge,’ he said, with a shrug and a spread of his hands.

Irmgard was mercifully spared my father’s advances. And my father was spared Irmgard’s almost certain rejection, thanks to Sandy, who was first out of the blocks to volunteer for the role of girlfriend.

She waited three weeks after my mother’s passing before writing a forthright letter to my father. She had to act fast because it turned out that he was a very eligible bachelor.

Not only had he proved himself a devoted partner, but he was ambulatory, had all his marbles and – and this was the clincher – he was a night-driver.

‘Maybe I’ll get a girlfriend. I think it’s what your mother would have wanted’