Pauline and I first met at a book event last year; a small gathering in a London arts club that marked the paperback release of the memoir I’d written, chronicling my young widowhood in my 30s. Pauline sat inconspicuously at the back of the darkened room and, when the Q&A was over, she quietly introduced herself, quickly drawing attention to the section she’d most connected with, the chapters where I explored self-pleasure and sex in the early months of my grief.
Younger people like me “got it more”, she told me, referring to her thirst for physical intimacy as a newly widowed 72-year-old. More often than not, people didn’t get it: “They don’t imagine that you’ve had a sex life.” But why, she asked? And what did that signify for others her age? A few days later, she sent me a Spotify link to an early 90s Bruce Springsteen song – Human Touch – describing how his melodious yearnings for “somethin’ to hold on to” summed up her recent frustrations as a more mature widow, a year after her husband’s death. The electrical wires were humming again, but she was increasingly feeling as if she had been put on mute by everyone around her.
