Opening your heart at any age

One of the most touching scenes I've ever witnessed was between my grandfather and grandmother, just a few months before she died.

She could barely see. He couldn't hold his hand steady enough to write.

When their car didn't start one morning, they had to get the serial number off the old battery. I walked into their garage to find Pop-Pop slowly reading off the numbers and Grammy carefully writing them down.

Before then, I didn't really understand how crucial they were to each other at that stage in their lives.

Grammy's death last November was painful for all of us, but nobody in the family could even begin to understand losing a spouse after 62 years of marriage. Of course, Pop-Pop is still sad. He talks about Grammy all the time and asked me to take pictures of her new headstone to mail his sons.

It felt weird, but I did it.

Seeing him lately has made me think about my own marriage. If The Other Half and I are blessed enough to stay together for five more decades, one of us will have the bury the other at some point. And then what? We don't have any children to come visit us -- not that having them is any guarantee.

Maybe it's ridiculous to consider at age 33, but what would happen to me if I were the spouse left behind?

On Saturday, I got my answer. I hope.

A relative told me about Mary Jo Kaempfer and her beau, Ken Moxey, who were getting married last Saturday. They're both 77. They're both widowed. A lifelong nonsmoker, Mary Jo has had seven oral cancer surgeries since the early 1990s.

They lived across the hall from each other at Chateau Girardeau. She started attending his Bible study group, he sat at her table in the dining hall. Next thing you know, they were on an outing to the Stars and Stripes Museum in Bloomfield, Mo.

The two of them should be some sort of advertisement for aging -- holding hands, flashing irrepressible smiles to each other and everyone else. I covered their wedding for the Southeast Missourian. They seemed surprised that the newspaper would care about their union. I was surprised they considered that union to be nothing unusual.

Once the reception settled down some and they had a minute to sit and talk, I had to ask:

"At a time when many people would consider their romantic lives over, yours is just starting. How did you open yourselves to love after your spouses died?"

Mary Jo, who lost her husband of 24 years in 1999, fielded that one. "First of all, you have to make some decisions. Am I going to be able to take care of the house?

"You have to remain active in the organizations you belong to. You have to allow people to give you their condolences and help if they want to do something for you. Call them and say, 'OK. I'm ready to go to lunch now.'

"One of the big things is to do for others. It's one of the reasons I started clowning."

Turns out she dresses up like a clown and goes to the area of the Chateau where people need more intensive medical care. Her visits cheer them up.

"It's devastating to lose a spouse," she finished. "You get very lonely. Your faith is very important."

She said that, after Ken lost his wife in 2001, he never stopped being the Chateau's "Mr. Fix-it." He kept leading Bible studies, too.

And then I got it.

Ken and Mary Jo weren't happy just because they'd found each other. They were determined to open their hearts to love of all kinds.

Two such open hearts were bound to find each other.

Heidi Hall is managing editor of the Southeast Missourian.