2 hours ago
5
In the mid 90s, I was in the prime of my life. I was in my early thirties, married to my soulmate, Lorna, with three kids under three. We’d emigrated from our small town in Worcestershire in the UK to Perth, and life was wonderful. Then Lorna was diagnosed with melanoma. We returned to England and less than a year later she was gone. It was completely unbelievable, as though someone had just come along and smashed my life into a million pieces.
The following months were a blur: I was a grief-stricken widower and newly single parent struggling to keep the kids’ life on track and my own head above water. As time went on, it was obvious I wasn’t doing well and my parents insisted on treating me to a holiday in the sun. I didn’t want to go.
I remember arriving at this beautiful hotel in the Canary Islands and sitting on the balcony. I was so miserable looking out at all the happy people holding hands.
Every day I’d drag myself down to the pool and sit in the same spot. There was a large group of British tourists there each day who would look at me sympathetically and invite me to join them. I turned them down a few times but eventually I thought “sod it” and joined in, careful not to burden anyone with the tragic details of why I was there all alone.
Over poolside beers I found myself chatting to this lovely English chap, Tyler. When I asked if he was married he surprised me by telling me he was gay. I’d never met an openly gay person in my life.
The day went on and as my spirits lifted I agreed to join them for the evening. Tyler and I spent the night chatting and laughing and one by one the group dwindled until it was just the two of us. As we eventually wandered back to the hotel he threw his arm around my shoulder and I just felt this connection. Over the next couple of days, I noticed I was thinking about him all the time. We went out for lunch one day, and I spilled my whole story.
Back in England we began chatting on the phone for hours every evening. It became clear that this friendship was lifting me out of the doldrums – our conversations each night made me feel like I wanted to get up the next morning.
One day I drove to London to surprise him at work. We went for lunch in this lovely restaurant with views over the Thames. As he reached out and touched my hand in the elevator, electricity ran through me. Then he leaned in and kissed me. I’d never had romantic feelings for a man before. It was so strange; it felt so right, yet so wrong. I was desperately confused but I couldn’t let go of it because it was making me feel something I hadn’t in the longest time – happy.
In those days, and in my conservative village, the idea of being openly gay was a complication I couldn’t add to my life. I’d been on a few dates with women, but they were always spoiling the kids and making me cringe; and I never wanted to feel like I was replacing Lorna.
Whatever was going on between Tyler and me was different. It didn’t feel like it was spilling over into the children’s lives: it was just for me. When I introduced Tyler to the kids, it was just as “dad’s friend”. They never questioned it, and Tyler didn’t want anything from us: he just wanted to give. He made everything fun and his upbeat personality lifted this dark cloud that had been hanging over us all. He was so comfortable in his own skin, so kind and so spontaneous; it changed everything.
Eventually, I told my parents. While my mother was sceptical, my father was amazingly supportive. Still, this was small-town England in the early 2000s and I felt the only way we could be together was if the house next door came up for sale. Miraculously, it did!
Ty is the most impulsive person you will ever meet. If he’s in, he’s fully in. He went back to London and called to say if I saw a “sold” sticker on the sign, it was him. A year after we met, he moved in and we became neighbours. Ty’s dad came over and popped a panel out of the garden fence. Out the front, we were a widower and a bachelor living side-by-side; out the back, we were together. We lived like that for years.
Several years later, friends from Australia came to visit. They went on and on about how much they loved it there, and how much Lorna had wanted the kids to grow up there. My kids seized on this and would not let it go. For a while I pretended I was looking into it, then I gave in. We returned to Perth when the kids were 12, 13 and 15; they finished high school there and then headed east for their careers. Ty and I soon followed.
We made a beautiful life for ourselves in Sydney. It was everything you could want from Australia, wrapped up with a bow on it. But I was starting to have problems at work. I’d been managing large scale property projects for decades, but I was getting forgetful – something wasn’t right. At the doctor’s one day, they asked me to turn my phone to silent and I was completely blank; I simply couldn’t work out how to do it. Tests would reveal I had early-onset dementia. I was only 55.
I fell into a serious depression. But Tyler has a very positive outlook on life: even in the worst of times you’d very, very, rarely catch him down. It’s just his natural way; some people are lucky enough to be like that.
No matter how maudlin I can get, he stays calm, and you will never hear a shortness in his voice. One day, as I continued to wallow about my diagnosis, he said: “Listen, you have to draw a line in the sand and you have to step over it. Because if you stay here in this moment, you’re gonna miss what is right under your nose and all the fun we could have.”
We’ve been travelling the world celebrating our 25 years together. Tyler has rescued me more than once. I feel so very lucky that we crossed paths.
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Jim Rogers is a dementia advocate and author of Holding On To Happiness, co-written with his daughter, Millie Robinson, available on 1 September through Pan Macmillan (RRP AU$36.99).
