I Discovered True Love in My 50s, My Fiance Died 5 Days After He Proposed

[ad_1] Strolling into the Purple Lion Inn in Norman Rockwell’s Stockbridge, Massachusetts, on a snowy Sunday morning, I requested the receptionist for a duplicate of The New York Occasions.

“I’m sorry, however the final one’s simply been taken,” she stated, pointing over her shoulder at a good-looking man standing close by.

He grinned at me sheepishly.

“I’m sorry I took the final paper,” he stated, handing me his copy.

“No, no,” I stated. “I solely get it so I can do the Sunday crossword, as a result of it's so a lot simpler than Saturday's.”

He agreed, giving me the journal, which has the crossword in it, and we each began laughing.

<img id="10818434" alt="" caption="" captionoverride="Alison Larkin and her late fiance, Bhima. (Courtesy Alison Larkin)" credit="" sourcealt="" sources="[]" fetchpriority="auto" loading="lazy" width="3088" height="2320" decoding="async" data-nimg="1" style="color:transparent;aspect-ratio:inherit;object-fit:cover" src="https://assets.newsweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/BHIMAALISON-1.jpg?w=1600&quality=75&webp=1 1x" bad-src="https://assets.newsweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/BHIMAALISON-1.jpg?w=1600&quality=75&webp=1"/> It was January 2019. I used to be 54, fortunately divorced with two children in faculty.

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Up till that second, I’d prevented love, heading swiftly in the wrong way if I met somebody I used to be interested in. As I instructed comedy membership audiences, “The important thing to coping with a concern of abandonment is up to now folks you don’t like, so in the event that they do depart you, it doesn’t matter.”

I’d narrated a number of the best love tales on the earth, together with “The Full Novels of Jane Austen” audiobook, however was now (form of) at peace with the truth that real love was one thing for different folks, one thing that had handed me by.

After which I met Bhima, who invited me to go on a stroll with him within the snow.

Bhima instructed me he had come to the U.S. from India 30 years earlier to do a Ph.D. in engineering, then later stop company America to work in renewable power. I instructed him I used to be adopted and that I had come to the U.S. from England 30 years earlier to seek out my delivery mom, which led to a shock profession as a comic and later a novelist and audiobook narrator.

“I’ve had one quick American marriage and a number of other American girlfriends," Bhima instructed me. “However my God, American ladies are so confrontational. It’s completely exhausting!”

“It’s the identical with American males,” I stated, “who get significantly irritable when packing.”

<img id="10818679" alt="" caption="" captionoverride="Larkin and Bhima. (Courtesy Alison Larkin)" credit="" sourcealt="" sources="[]" fetchpriority="auto" loading="lazy" width="3088" height="2320" decoding="async" data-nimg="1" style="color:transparent;aspect-ratio:inherit;object-fit:cover" src="https://assets.newsweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Bhima-and-Alison-2.jpg?w=1600&quality=75&webp=1 1x" bad-src="https://assets.newsweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Bhima-and-Alison-2.jpg?w=1600&quality=75&webp=1"/> From that second we spent each spare second collectively. We hiked, listened to jazz, traveled and met one another’s households. We fell in love.

“However we will’t be in love,” I stated to Bhima in the future.

“Why not?” he requested.

“There’s no friction. We don’t have to barter.”

“I do know,” he stated. “Isn’t it nice?”

It was like sporting a shoe that's too tight in your complete life, then lastly taking it off. And there we each had been, in our 50s, totally in love for the primary time in our lives with somebody who “acquired” us. And I knew, in my “knower,” that I had met a person I might belief with my life.

On the finish of July 2020, on a stroll by a river, Bhima requested me to marry him. We had been radiantly pleased as we began to plan our life collectively. Bhima would work out a solution to flip plastics into gasoline; I'd begin writing once more. We'd spend time with one another’s households, creating a house folks would love to return to. We'd join extra, not much less, with the folks we cherished.

5 nights later, wanting up on the Vermont sky in awe, Bhima stated quietly, “We're all comprised of the celebrities, Alison. Each dwelling factor comes from stardust.”

The following morning, Bhima stated he wasn’t feeling effectively. We known as the physician, who instructed Bhima to go to the medical middle to take a COVID take a look at. They wouldn’t let me go in with him.

Lower than an hour later, I used to be ready within the parking zone when a safety guard instructed me that they had left Bhima alone in a room and once they got here again they discovered him on the ground in cardiac arrest. Quickly after that, Bhima was pronounced useless.

On the floor of issues I used to be functioning effectively, however actually I used to be fully numb. It was the numbness that helped me get by the Zoom funeral and the subsequent few weeks. Unable to work or eat, I lay on my couch, curled up in a ball, pondering of Bhima.

Then, about six weeks after he died, I heard Bhima’s voice in my head saying, “Alison, don’t waste your time. Life’s quick, and also you’re alive now. Begin by stepping into the most effective bodily form of your life, then it will likely be time so that you can begin writing once more.”

He may very well be fairly dictatorial when he wished to be.

<img id="10817884" alt="" caption="" credit="" sourcealt="" sources="[]" fetchpriority="auto" loading="lazy" width="3088" height="2320" decoding="async" data-nimg="1" style="color:transparent;aspect-ratio:inherit;object-fit:cover" src="https://assets.newsweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/alison-and-bhima-2.jpg?w=1600&quality=75&webp=1 1x" bad-src="https://assets.newsweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/alison-and-bhima-2.jpg?w=1600&quality=75&webp=1"/> So I began operating previous the rivers and up the mountains the place Bhima and I had walked. After which, in the future, the numbness thawed and as a substitute of despair, I discovered myself filled with power and a form of pleasure that I didn't perceive.

The one factor remotely prefer it, in my expertise, is what occurs after the ache of childbirth, which is excruciating, however with out the ache you wouldn’t have the children.

I reached out to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who knew me and my work, and I requested him if he might clarify the enjoyment I felt. He urged me to inform this story as broadly as potential as a result of “it'll deliver hope.”

I might hear Bhima’s voice in my head: “You may’t ignore Desmond Tutu, Alison. Simply bloody do it!”

So I wrote a brand new solo present known as “Grief… A Comedy,” which was a success in Edinburgh and London in 2024. Then I wrote a follow-up e book of the identical title.

“Grief… A Comedy,” the e book, begins six weeks after Bhima died, when he exhibits up at my kitchen desk, as charming as ever, decided to assist me discover love once more. It’s imaginary, in fact. Or is it?

None of us can know what occurs subsequent, however I'm certain that when somebody we deeply love dies, part of who they had been turns into part of who we at the moment are.

So if I’m proper, and there’s part of Bhima inside me that’s scripting this now, let me depart you with a couple of phrases from him:

“The physique might go, however the love doesn’t go anyplace. It’s known as renewable power, Alison.

And I don’t care if it’s the top of an extended day, you need to recycle every little thing.”

So I did.

Alison Larkin is a comic, audiobook narrator and the bestselling writer of “The English American.” Her new e book, “Grief… A Comedy,” is now accessible in all codecs, together with audio. Comply with her on Instagram or at www.alisonlarkin.com.