ELOPEMENT SPRINGS ETERNAL

At the ripe age of 65, we decided to run away and get married

- Melodie Campbell

I COULD START this story with the day Mike got down on one knee at the dinner table to propose marriage and then, thanks to his arthritis, couldn't get up without help.

Or the day he said, "We're going to piss off some people, whatever we do.

Why not elope?" But really, we go further back-47 years, in fact. Mike and I got to know each other in our first year studying commerce at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. He was a cool guy, and we both loved sailing and playing tennis. But I was engaged to someone else, so we stayed friends.

Life moved on.

My beloved husband Dave had died of cancer a year before the pandemic. Mike's marriage had recently ended in divorce. During the bitter loneliness that came with living alone through the lockdowns, he found me on Facebook and we started talking. Long story short, he arrived at my house in Burlington with flowers and an overnight satchel, and we spent the rest of lockdown together, catching up on 40 years.

A little over a year after he first showed up on my doorstep, Mike proposed. And then we had some decisions to make.

Public gatherings at the time were limited to just 10 people. Our adult kids and their families added up to more than that, not to mention our best friends and our siblings. How could we choose which ones to include in the wedding?

That is when Mike suggested a wacky idea: We should elope.

Who elopes at 65? I thought. Isn't that a thing done by people much younger than we are?