Prolog   It is unnecessary to describe Beverly’s personality. She appealed to virtually everyone who knew her. For those who do not know her early years in Minnesota, they are just what you’d expect: good student, well liked, hard worker, efficient, musical (played the baritone horn in school and community bands). For her adult years, everyone also knows the mantra of what we did together: German, French, Spanish, other languages, extensive travel, teaching, Master of Arts, Doctor of Modern Languages, New York City, Tampa, Eden Bay in the Dominican Republic.

However, not everyone knows that for years we combined our first names into the team name Bevin, nor that for the 43 years we knew eachother (42 married) we were never apart, not for a day.

The purpose here is to discuss primarily just two years out of those 43, which I’m calling the bookend years of 1961 and 2004.

Nineteen Sixty-One   I had done some travelling in my early years with others, but had taken only two trips by myself. The second solo trip was to to Vermont, to the Middlebury College German School in the summer of 1961, one of several language schools on the campus. You sign a pledge to speak only the language of the School for the six-week session.

The session started in the last week of June; I’ll estimate the date as June 25 (?), 1961. It was the first day, and I was at dinner. Language study had exploded because of Sputnik, and the German School was at capacity. Dining rooms were set up in Gifford Hall, both on the upper level and lower. I was in Lower Gifford, which we referred to in German as Unter-Gifford. I remember quite clearly rows of picnic-like tables, with benches seating four on each side. I can visualize this picture perfectly. Toward the end of the meal that first day, I decided to turn around.

At the very next table, but sitting on the far side, facing the same direction I was, I saw a Smiling Face.

Now, why did I turn around? One’s mind’s eye plays tricks on one. I probably turned just to see what the rest of the room looked like, yet my mind’s eye keeps telling me that two eyes were boring holes in the back of my head. No, as clear as my recollection is, my mind’s eye is lying. The Smiling Face was chatting pleasantly with the person on its right. Yet at one point, our glances did meet.

On another matter here I know my mind’s eye is lying through its teeth. I am really quite sure that there was no baby spotlight mounted in the ceiling pinpointing the Smiling Face. Yet, somehow, that’s what my mind’s eye keeps showing me, the liar.

Minnesota and New York met right after dinner. We stayed glued to each other, speaking only German, for the six-week summer session.

That same day after dinner I found out that Bev’s roommate was Rita, who I’d known from undergraduate study in the Queens College German Department. She was also Bev’s roommate for the year in Germany, and we remain friends to this day.

By mid-August the session was over, and Minnesota and New York parted until late September. Those five weeks were the last time we were apart for 43 years.

In those years, sailing was much cheaper than flying. We were both going to study in Mainz, and Bev decided to cancel her ticket on the SS United States to sail with me on the French Line’s Liberté. For years, she would joke about never having gotten to travel on the United States.

Bev flew to New York in the last week of September. I remember for a fact the ship sailed on the last day of the month, so I’d estimate Bev arrived at our house in Hollis, Queens on or about September 25 (?), 1961. [Note: September 27. See 2004 Series 16.4.] That date is the beginning of our 43-year record. After that week or so of getting reacquainted, we sailed on the Liberté on our First Great European Adventure Together on September 30, 1961.

After a nine-day stop in Paris (could that be more romantic?) we got to Mainz. Eventually, Bev and Rita got a room in the same building where I had one up in the attic. Postwar Germany was still primitive. Mainz still had bombed-out ruins. There was no central heating in our building, just pot-bellied stoves that we had to feed briquets to. To save money and still keep warm, the three of us often spent evenings in restaurants.

One other thing I’ll mention is to show that you learn about a country best by being there. On November 11 (you’ll see why I remember the date), we were in a restaurant rather late in the center of Mainz. Everyone was sitting around quite calmly. Shortly after 11 I went to the men’s room. When I came out, everyone was up and about dancing between the tables. That’s when we learned about Fasching.

Carnival celebrations, such as Mardi Gras, end just before Ash Wednesday. However, Carnival, which is a Big Thing in Germany, and known in Mainz as Fasching, is associated in Germany with the number eleven. For instance, the carnival clubs that prepare the parade floats have Boards with 11 members. Therefore, Fasching is considered to start on November 11 (the eleventh day of the eleventh month) at 11:11 PM, hence the revelry. That was one of many things we learned that year.

We were engaged that Christmas at Bev’s relatives’ in Sweden. Everyone there had assumed I was German (Bev goes to Germany and arrives in Sweden with a boyfriend—so what else would they think?). Her folks had also come to Sweden from Minnesota for the holidays. We were married in Minnesota on August 25, 1962.

Two Thousand and Four   It was in the last week of June, 1995, just before we were to travel from Florida to move into our newly refurbished New York apartment, when Bev had an MRI and was diagnosed with Pick’s disease. It began to explain some occasionally erratic behavior that had occurred on rare occasion over the previous 5-8 years. In retrospect now, that last week in June would have been 34 years to the week since we had met in Lower Gifford. She survived over nine years more, which amazed her neurologist, who suspected that it was the stimulation of travel, theater, cinema, dining out, and interacting with people that radically slowed down the degenerative process. We hadn’t travelled out of the US since 1990, and indeed, didn’t start again until the end of the decade, when I figured out how we could manage, considering her condition. We had five more summer European trips from 2000-2004, and she enjoyed every bit of it as much as I did.

As 2004 approached, I felt we could expand that travel even further, and I planned two more winter trips, one for 2004 around South America on the Caronia, one for 2005 in the Caribbean. However, the one for 2005 fell a bit early, in December 2004, so it was to be a busy travel year.

Bev’s Fan Club expanded even further on the Caronia. Oddly, what was to be her last birthday, her 67 th, fell on the day we were to get off the ship, so it was celebrated twice, one day early on the ship and one day late in Tampa with friends. On the ship she received a number of gifts, trinkets really, but it showed the impression she had made on people, even though she no longer was able to speak. One German lady we knew got quite emotional and wanted to take our picture on one of the last nights. After she did, I invited her to our table at dinner for birthday cake (Bev’s favorite, tiramisù) and champagne. She was so pleased, she asked to take over the job of feeding Bev her cake.

In the spring, Bev had more difficulty standing, even if I held her. In June she developed that bedsore, but two doctors said it was all right to travel. On the Queen Mary 2 eastbound, it was our last normal sea voyage. The three weeks in Europe proceeded well, except that she was having trouble chewing, and I eliminated meat. In Amsterdam she had a bit of a choking episode in a restaurant.

Then began a series of “lasts”, although I didn’t realize it yet. On our one night in London, July 21, I splurged and stayed at the newly restored Great Eastern Hotel at Liverpool Street Station. It was our last hotel, and last night, together. We had a great meal at the hotel’s Aurora resturant that evening. It was our last restaurant meal together.

On July 22 we arrived at the Queen Mary 2 in Southampton for our westbound crossing. In the lobby of the ship we met and chatted with our friend Michael Spencer. It was our last normal social gathering together. In our cabin was a bottle of champagne. I went to the Kings Court cafeteria and brought back some food. That snack was our last meal “home” together. Before the ship sailed we went back to the Medical Facility, where they knew us and we knew them. The wanted to admit Beverly immediately, then send her later to a hospital in New York, where she would probably need at least some nursing care afterward. I told the doctor on the spot it was becoming clear to me that July 22 was a turning point, and that I felt the nursing care would be permanent. That turned out to be right. She never came home again.

From then on, the decline was rapid, to puréed food, to the inability to swallow at all, to a feeding tube, also severe weight loss. She needed constant antibiotics because of infection. As I had done on two earlier occasions years ago when she was in the hospital, I visited every day.

On August 25, we celebrated our 42nd--and last--wedding anniversary, with no fanfare, at the nursing home. The director of the home sent us flowers, which was a nice touch.

September 25 fell on a weekend, so my family was with us in the nursing home when it occurred to me that that it was the 43rd anniversary of Bev’s arrival in New York to our house (at that time) in Hollis, Queens. Ironically, she was now living in a nursing home in Whitestone, Queens. On Thursday, September 30, the family stopped by the nursing home again, and I took them out to dinner (in Bev’s “neighborhood”) to celebrate the exact 43rd anniversary of our sailing on the Liberté.

As October arrived, I finally decided I had to make that business trip to Eden Bay in the Dominican Republic. The previous October, Bev came along, and friends Jeannine, Patti, and Adrienne, on two occasions, took her swimming in the pool. By “swimming” I mean they kept her floating between them as they walked around the pool. Those were her last two occasions in a pool. But this year, that wasn’t to be.

On what was to be my last visit, on Wednesday, October 6, I freshened her up and told her I was about to break our record of 43 years (plus about a week and a half), since I had to take a trip to the DR. I said goodbye in order to take my first solo trip since arriving in Middlebury (all these parallels amaze me), but it would turn out to be the last goodbye.

She lasted just three more days, and died peacefully in her lounge chair on Saturday, October 9. The next day, Christopher Reeve died of exactly the same cause, infection due to bedsores leading to organ failure.

I’ve been saying that Bev had style right to the end. Her period of rapid decline started on nothing less than the Queen Mary 2, and she went out the same weekend as a highly respected celebrity.

There was more irony in how I got the word. The first two nights I was at Eden Bay, those of us who knew each other pulled tables together and sat shoulder-to-shoulder. But on the night of the 9th, it was decided not to do that, and I was sitting with Art and Jeannine at a table for four. There was a very obviously empty fourth chair at the table, which later proved to be symbolic. Patricia Gorden, our Manager signaled to Art, who got me out in the lobby, where she told me. I told her later I wouldn’t have wanted anyone else to have told me.

The ironic parallels continue: what started at dinner in Lower Gifford Hall ended at dinner at Eden Bay Resort.

It was decided I’d stay to finish my business at Eden Bay, and we had the visitation at Gleason’s funeral home the following Saturday, October 16, with cremation two days later. Some humor always helps at a funeral home: at Gleason’s, my mother Sophie commented on how the two of us seemed joined at the hip. Everyone always said Vincenbev like it was one word, which resulted in her misspeaking on one occasion. Lillian was coming to visit us, and Sophie found herself telling someone: “Vincenbev’s mother is coming from Minnesota.”

People scatter ashes on land or at sea. I wanted to continue the theme of the sea, but with something more specific than scattering, and Gleason’s had the answer. They got me a saucer-shaped, biodegradeable urn, which even had a sailboat-in-the-water theme depicted on top. We found someone with a boat, and the following weekend, on Sunday, October 24, we sailed out on the Great South Bay from Freeport NY for what I’m calling a Consignment to the Sea of Bev’s ashes. After a while we reached Jones Inlet, between Point Lookout NY and the Jones Beach peninsula. There were huge breakers on the open sea beyond the inlet, so we couldn’t go further, but we could see beyond, where, in 1961 Bev and I had sailed eastbound on the Liberté on our First Great European Adventure Together, and where, in 2004, on the Queen Mary 2, we had just sailed westbound on our Last Great European Adventure Together. We pulled up along the Jones Beach peninsula, just off the United States Coast Guard Station, where they could watch over her, and, after some readings in German and English, consigned the urn to the sea, along with white carnations, Bev’s favorite flower. The urn slowly sank within a minute or two. What had started in the German language in 1961 also ended with German in 2004.

On November 11, in Minnesota, I’m having a Memorial Reception for family and friends in the evening at the Sofitel Hotel, proceeded in the afternoon by a Memorial Service at the church where we were married. This date was chosen partially because, as Veterans Day, it’s a semi-holiday, but also because it’s 11/11, and at 11:11 PM in Germany carnival celebrations will break loose, as we had witnessed 43 years earlier. That will be at 4:11 PM Central Time, just as we’re going for coffee and cake in the social hall after the Memorial Service. It is appropriate that a German cultural event--and one that we had attended years ago--should be taking place at the same time as our ceremonies.

So Bev will never have made it to the second winter trip I had planned, for this December. The day we got off the QM2 I ran to the phone and, regretfully, changed both the trip this December, and the planned trip for the summer of 2005, to single occupancy. I am back to solo trips. In December I will sail for two weeks on the Deutschland, happily speaking German, out of Santo Domingo to 12 islands, exactly 5 of which will be new. So Bev’s total of countries visited will have to remain at 95, but mine will hit 100, allowing me to join the Travelers’ Century Club. Yet our motto remains: Bevin forever.

Epilog   Following this memoir are the two pages of verse that I read for the Consignment to the Sea. Jürgen Stradtmann, a friend in Germany, knowing of our interest in German, on hearing the news promptly sent me a selection of German verses. I chose the most appropriate ones and put them in an order I liked with titles and translations. My sister Chris found the verse “Death is nothing at all”. My favorite sentence is the third from the end. Chris suggested a collective title for all the verses: Words for Beverly.

Finally, we had a minister at Gleason’s say a few words. He spoke about Beverly, then quoted an elderly parishoner he had known, who had told him this:

I suggest we all treat ourselves to some roses.