Love in the Elevator: When Mom Met Bernie
Top 5 Signs Your Mom Might Be Falling in Love
The sparkle in her eye that you’ve (frankly) never seen.
She’s dressing up again—and asks for the earrings she handed you when she “went into this joint.”
You meet a guy at coffee who is showing your mom his… tie tack.
You get asked to have dinner with them in the dining room.
Is that an indent on the other side of the bed?
I had never seen that twinkle in my mom’s eye. Not like this. And I had definitely not seen it with her two long-term boyfriends—one in the early days after her separation from my dad (I was in middle school), and one when I was teaching right after college. Those men smelled better than her (her words) and were almost as well groomed. That was the bar.
Then one morning, on my walk to her assisted living in San Francisco, I got a text.
Mom: there is someone I want you to meet this morning at coffee.
Me: (as I walked through duboce park) sounds good! I will be there in about 23 minutes.
I picked up my step, wondering if Mom had actually made a friend while sitting in the café—her four cups of coffee keeping her company and making room for one more.
Our coffee ritual was nice. I would walk to meet Mom, who spent about three hours every morning in the café: coffee, then decaf, then upstairs to her room to not eat lunch in the dining room. It meant I could get work done, make calls during my walk, and then take a break with her… and bail when it got too intense.
These were the early days in 2017, when I was still running my telecommunications site acquisition company with my wife and Mom still had her date book filled with doctor’s appointments. Back then, she was still “Phyllis who has places to be,” even if most of those places involved a waiting room and fluorescent lighting.
When I arrived and signed in (pre-COVID, pre-face sign-in), I’d usually chat with the person at the desk, then head up the stairs and find Mom with her new friends. Sometimes she was alone and talking on her phone (against the rules). Today, though, she was not alone.
Today there was a man in a suit, a yellow legal pad, and a stack of travel books nearby—smiling at Mom and nodding like whatever she was saying was… important. Like he had time. Like he wasn’t going anywhere.
Bernie. Bernie. Bernie.
I have 55 voicemails from Bernie that I saved from Mom’s phone. At some point I will write a Modern Love as an ode to him.
Super ager.
Super mensch.
Traveler.
Mom’s Bernie.
When I email him, he always replies. Unassuming. Quirky. An absolute darling.
He wanted to take my mom on cruises. He kept travelling even when she wouldn’t. He is a testament to the fact that when you keep going, you keep going. A living legend.
And that morning? I watched the two of them at coffee and thought: Oh. This is what it looks like when my mother is… delighted. Not performing delight. Not trying it on for size. Not “fine.” Actual delight.
This was the golden era of Mom’s assisted living experience. She had a boyfriend. He was so sweet. He truly loved her. He got her.
They would watch Monk together. At some point, I will begin bingeing that series, but just knowing they were snuggled in together made me so happy. (Yes, snuggled. I’m using the word. Let me live.)
At a certain point Bernie only had a La-Z-Boy and a flight simulator in his room. I know this because I sometimes went down the hall to print something out in his room. That’s how normal this relationship became: my mother’s boyfriend as a perfectly reasonable printer solution.
I liked the idea of him falling asleep next to her.
At one point my mom slipped out of her Lazy-Boy-like chair because she was waiting for him in a silk nightie. That’s not a sentence I ever expected to write about my mother, but here we are. Assisted living: the place where dignity, desire, and gravity all collide.
When Mom was moved to Santa Rosa, he would visit her by taking a bus to Santa Rosa and staying overnight in a hotel. No drama. No martyrdom. Just… showing up. Over and over. Like love can be mundane and heroic at the same time.
When Mom was passing, I made sure to ring him and put them on the phone together. They had a ritual where at the end of a call they professed their love for each other by saying:
“Mwah, mwah.”
“Mwah, mwah.”
I love the fact that those were his last words to her.
And Bernie—because Bernie is Bernie—kept traveling. Even after. Even now. Every so often I email him and he responds back right away, like proof of life and proof of character: Bernie describing a museum, a meal, an upcoming cruise, the weather. Here’s his most recent email:
These small details: how he uses a cane now, and how—regardless—he’s still tapping his way forward. Not dramatically. Not tragically. Just Bernie, continuing. Which brings me to this: when people talk about “late-life love,” they often make it sound like a Hallmark movie or a medical anomaly.
But what I saw was simpler. And better.
A man with travel books and a yellow legal pad.
A woman with four cups of coffee and a sparkle I’d never seen.
And a relationship that made my mother’s world bigger—right there inside a building with a dining hall, a calendar of activities, and a rule against phone calls.