I found the love of my life at 50 — then my fiancé died

It was when my two kids had both left for university and I approached 50 that it hit me: Elizabeth had Darcy, Jane Eyre had Rochester — what about me?
A friend suggested online dating. What could possibly go wrong? One guy arrived with scrambled egg in his beard. Another assured me off the bat that he was “a catch”. I met a university professor who talked about himself for three hours straight, then told me what a great conversationalist I was.
Up until this point, I had always avoided true love. I’d decided the key to dealing with a lifelong fear of abandonment was to date people you don’t like, so if they do leave you it doesn’t matter.
I was adopted as a baby and brought up by English parents, but I discovered my birth mother in Tennessee in my mid-twenties. Although our reunion was more than slightly challenging, in the throes of “I’ve just found out I’m really an American” euphoria I ended up moving to New York, where I became a stand-up comic.
Assuming that love was something that only other people did, rather like cleaning the kitchen, I married a steady older man who handled the domestic side of life while my act led to Hollywood, a one-woman show called The English American, and a bestselling novel of the same name.
Our children were seven and nine when I found out that all our money had been lost by my then husband (now my wasbund); not because he was a bad man, but because he was bad at maths, which it turns out is quite important if you’re running your own business.
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I left my marriage of 15 years, moved to a rural town in Massachusetts with an average age of 75, and supported our children by becoming a narrator of more than 250 audiobooks, including all 81 hours of The Complete Novels of Jane Austen.
When the children grew up and left, and I found myself alone in my recording studio narrating great classic romances, I began to wonder if my choice to avoid love had been worth it.
By January 2019, however, I had given up on online dating. Then, on a snowy Sunday morning I made my weekly visit to the hotel at the bottom of my road because it’s the only place that stocks the New York Times (and its excellent crossword). When I got there, the receptionist pointed to a man about my age who was smiling sheepishly and apologising for taking the last paper.
We started chatting and found out that we’d both lived in the US for 30 years. Bhima, 53, had come from south India to do a PhD and set up a solar company. He had no kids but, like me, he’d had one short American marriage and then had kind of stuck there.
Soon we were wearing the road out between our houses, spending every spare moment together. I’d always wondered what true love felt like — it was as if I’d spent my life wearing a shoe that was too tight and I had finally taken it off.
“We can’t be in love,” I said to Bhima one day.
“Why not?”
“There’s no friction. We don’t have to ‘negotiate’.”
“I know,” Bhima said. “Isn’t it great?”
He was extra motivated to be healthy because he’d had a triple heart bypass three years earlier, so he insisted that we exercise every day. He was also always trying to get me to write again, but I kept telling him: “I can only write when I absolutely have to. And right now, I just want to be happy.” And I really, really was.
By the end of July 2020 we’d been together for a year and a half, and on a walk by a river, Bhima asked me to marry him. Of course, I said yes.
Five days later, after a perfect evening gazing at the stars, he said he wasn’t feeling well. We drove to the medical centre, but they wouldn’t let me go in with him due to pandemic restrictions. I was waiting outside by the car when a security guard told me that Bhima had been left alone and then found on the floor in cardiac arrest. Less than a week after we’d decided to spend the rest of our lives together, this beautiful 54-year-old man was pronounced dead.
The world was still shut down, so his funeral had to take place on Zoom (my parents had never used it before, so you can imagine how that went). Then it was just me, the dog, the cat and my grief.
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After a few weeks of lying on the sofa, numb, thinking about Bhima, I heard his voice in my head say: “Alison, it’s time to build on what we started and get into the best physical shape of your life.” I started running past the lakes where we had walked, and whenever I felt tired I heard his voice in my head saying: “Keep going! And when are you going to start writing again?”
I kept waiting for despair to kick in. But it didn’t. Instead, I found myself filled with an extraordinary energy and a kind of joy I’d never felt before. The only thing remotely like it in my experience is the elation that follows the excruciating pain of childbirth.
All the while, I kept thinking about something Archbishop Desmond Tutu had said to me. I had been introduced to Tutu in New York 15 years earlier by a friend who was making a documentary about him. He was interested in my novel, my adoption and my Margaret Thatcher impression. At one point he became serious and said: “I want you to remember something. I can’t control what happens to me, but I can control how I respond to it.”
I did remember, and when Bhima died, it helped.
Our mutual friend encouraged me to write to Tutu and tell him what had happened. I sent him an email, telling him that I’d avoided love all my life because I was so afraid of the worst happening. Then I found it. Then, when the worst did happen, instead of wanting to hide under the bed and never come out, I found that I wanted to live — and love — more fully than ever. Why was that?
Five minutes later Tutu replied from South Africa, writing: “Alison, I want you to know that I have asked God to find you another soul mate, and She said She is on the case. But first, you must tell this story as widely as possible, because it will bring hope.” I told him I didn’t think I could bear to write another book, and he said: “So tell jokes, sing songs, whatever. But tell it!”
I could picture Bhima roaring with laughter and saying: “You can’t ignore Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Alison. Just bloody do it!”
Recording audiobooks by myself in a home studio means my only human contact most days was during my early morning trip to the coffee shop, where I made friends with a group of men in their seventies (and learnt a lot about fan belts, alternators and second-hand cars). With Bhima gone, my evenings and weekends were completely empty.
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So with his voice in my head I wrote a new show, Grief … A Comedy, and after it sold out at the Soho Theatre in London last November, I’m performing it at the Edinburgh Fringe, followed by a UK tour. The world may be divided, but we all love, laugh and grieve. People from all different backgrounds keep telling me the show reminds them that there is light despite all the darkness. So I think Bhima and Tutu (who died in December 2021) are pleased.
As for me, perhaps I will find true love again one day. In the meantime, now I know how quickly life can end, I won’t waste a minute of whatever time I’ve got left.As told to Charlotte Lytton
Alison Larkin: Grief … A Comedy is at Assembly George Square Studio 2 at 2.10pm until August 25 (edfringe.com)