Our Last Kiss

By Joan Price | August 7, 2008 |
Joan and Robert coast embrace


On August 2, 2001, I kissed Robert for the first time in the moonlight after our line dance class.

On August 2, 2008, I kissed him for the last time.

***

Those of you who read Better Than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk about Sex after Sixty know our love story, and know that Robert was living with leukemia and lymphoma. After the book was published, Robert had six months of chemotherapy , leaving his cancer in remission. We had two glorious years of health, vigor, and intense, joyful love after that. We felt we were the happiest, luckiest couple in the world.

Last April, Robert was diagnosed with a new blood cancer: multiple myeloma. It’s a debilitating, painful, and incurable cancer of the bone marrow, causing extreme bone pain and fragility. Within a month he was living with five spinal fractures and excruciating pain, despite the best efforts of his medical team and an array of powerful narcotics.

I didn’t write anything about our life during this time because Robert asked for privacy. If you’re a regular reader, surely you noticed that I became curiously silent for most of the past couple of months, and when I did post, it lacked the personal candor that you expect from me.

Ten days before his death, Robert entered into home hospice care, and the marvelous hospice team was able to bring him relief from the pain. He then wavered between sleeping and waking, sometimes marvelously lucid and rational, often only partially conscious, and occasionally uttering beautiful messages from the world he was visiting. Here are some of the things he told me as he floated in and out of lucidity, and I’ll treasure

them always:

• “Do you remember the time we laughed so hard that we shook the feathers off our caps?”

• “We did have fun together, didn’t we? We did have fun.”

• “Wasn’t it wonderful when we walked in the water in every state, or almost every state?”

• “It was just yesterday that we walked and walked, and I knew the name of every flower.”

• “I came by here hoping to see you.”

***

Yes, I’m still committed to this work I do as an activist for elder sexuality, and don’t worry, I’ll have my voice back soon. My work was almost as important to Robert as it is to me, and he made me promise I’d keep my torch burning. He was a private person, and sometimes I embarrassed him with my candor, but he believed I was doing the right thing talking out loud about this hush-hush topic, and he supported me all the way.

I welcome your comments here and your private emails to me. I know I have many readers who have visited without commenting. If my work here has made a difference to you, if you learned something useful or were moved by my book, I hope you’ll honor me with your words. I could use them now.

Warmly,

Joan

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A Love Letter to Aging Bodies and Faces

By Joan Price | February 6, 2008 |

Do you think aging has made you less attractive? Do you have difficulty seeing yourself or your partner as sexy and desirable?

Then it’s time to challenge your own as well as society’s perception that only young bodies and unlined faces are sexy and beautiful. We need to accept – no, celebrate! – our wrinkles and rejoice in all the pleasure these bodies can still give us.

Let’s join together and practice rejecting society’s youth-oriented view of beauty, keeping ourselves fit so that we feel happy with our bodies, and keeping a loud, buoyant sense of humor!

I love my 71-year-old husband Robert’s face and body. I look into his vibrant blue eyes and I see the young man as well as the older man. The older man is no less sexy than the younger man must have been (I didn’t know him then). In fact, he’s more sexy, because he has learned how to live joyfully and love completely in ways that a young man can’t know until he has lived a full life.

I look in the mirror, where new wrinkles seem to appear weekly. I try to walk my own talk, accepting my own face as I accept Robert’s, telling myself these wrinkles are badges of living, laughing, and loving. I tell myself, this is the youngest I’ll ever be from now on!

I asked my 103-year-old great aunt what it felt like to be more than a hundred. She said, “I’m the same person I always was.”

So are we. Rather than trying to deny our aging — which is futile anyway — let’s celebrate it.

(Photos by Mitch Rice, Robert’s son, on Robert’s 71st birthday)

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Does Her Past Sex Life Matter?

By Joan Price | July 24, 2006 |

Don, age 73, who read Better Than I Ever Expected, wrote this email:

A question for Robert Rice. I need your help. Like you I have re-entered the world of two people in the same house after 5 years of no one, and like your Lady, my Lady has had a very active sex life in the period before our meeting. The question is this…how do you deal with that? Do you think about the other men that were before you? I understand that at our age it shouldn’t be an issue but I find myself wondering how I “stack up” to the others. I don’t want to ask, I feel that would be crossing the line. Should I just accept the fact that we are together and that’s the end of it? Tell me how you deal with it… and thank you !

Robert replies to Don:

Don, in response to the question that you asked me, I understand where you’re coming from. I used to worry about this myself. I am fortunate to have someone who assures me that I am the one she loves. This assurance comes in many ways, and sometimes it’s up to me to see and recognize it. This gives me great freedom to let go of worrying about what has happened before.

Since we learn from all our previous sexual experiences what we want and like, and what we don’t, this sexual learning necessarily includes all past lovers. A couple of Joan’s past lovers are now our mutual friends, and both of us get along well with the other’s ex-spouse.

The question whether we measure up to other guys who have had sex with our partner and question whether we are good enough, or big enough, etc., I am told — and believe — it’s much more a male concern than female. In any case, I have come to believe that authentic expression of love and the ability to be playful and experimental seem to be the most reliable ingredients for successful sex, rather than focusing on measuring up (which can only be unknown anyway).

It seems to me that you answered your own question in your last statement about accepting the fact that you are together. That says a lot! It sounds like you’re on the right track!

I hope this helps with your concern.

Joan replies to Don:

When I fell in love with Robert, it didn’t matter to me whom I had bedded before and what I had experienced with anyone else. All that surfaced in my mind was how powerful my bond was with this man I loved. Remember our primary sex organ is our brain. For me, my previous experience was a good thing, because I was done with needing to experiment, and I knew whom/what I wanted, sexually and emotionally. I’ll bet your special lady would tell you the same.

Have other readers dealt with this situation? What do you think about Don’s question? I invite you to comment.

— Joan

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