The Current - How these 75 and 105 year-old women became "soul friends"

Episode Date: September 26, 2025

Merilyn Simonds and Beth Robinson are two friends from Kingston, Ontario, who decided during the Covid pandemic  to make it a priority to get together, once a week, for a walk. Since then they've faced the challenges of aging, and discovered the joys of deep connections. The Current producer Alison Masemann spent an afternoon with them, and found out about Beth's passion for sports cars, and how they handled the role reversal when Merilyn — the younger of the two — became ill.

Did you know that it was once illegal to shop on Sundays? That's true for when I was born. I remember this, and I'm not that old. I'm not, okay? Leave me alone. Anyway, I'm Phelan Johnson, and I host See You in Court, a new podcast about the cases that changed Canada and the ordinary people who drove that change. From the drugstore owner who defied the Lord's Day, to the migma man who defended his treaty right to fish, to the gay teacher who got fired and fought back. Find and follow, see you in court, wherever you get your. your podcasts. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast.

Marilyn Simons and Beth Robinson can't really remember when they first met. It was that long ago, but their friendship took on a new meaning during the pandemic when they made a commitment to get together once a week. Since then, they have faced the challenges of illness and aging and discovered the joys of deep connection and shared passions. The story of their friendship is the subject. of Maryland's latest book. It's called Walking with Beth, Conversations with my 100-year-old friend. The current's Alison Maceman, spent an afternoon with them in Kingston, Ontario.

So her driveway is right before the first big tree. Beth Robinson's split-level bungalow sits behind a tidy lawn with two lush leafy maple trees that tower overhead. The neighborhood is a pocket of mid-century homes a little outside of downtown Kingston. As we arrive, Beth is waiting at the door. Her tidy, gray, Bob hairstyle pulled back with a hair clip. Right away, it's time for a favorite ritual, tea. Can I be mother and pour the tea? Oh, yes, you can make it to be here.

Beth lives here alone at the age of 105. That's right, she's 105. I'm surrounded by these wonderful treasures on the walls. The home is immaculate. The living room is lined with artwork and sculpture. It's clear Beth takes a lot of pride in the place. But the other wonderful miracle of this house is that every window has a tree in it all through the whole house.

The natural world also speaks to me in a very spirit way. And so those trees are wonderfully comfortable. and they're always changing. They have their rhythms as well. Marilyn Simons is Beth's younger friend. She's 75. It's one of those friendships where you feel like you've known each other forever. Marilyn's an author who's published more than 20 books of fiction and nonfiction

and helped Beth as she was working on her first ever book in her mid-90s. Five years ago, a new idea started to take shape. It was Marilyn who came to me with the idea. that we might do something together. That invitation was such a delicious one. That, of course, I said, yes, I'd love that. When I was turning 70, it felt like I was entering a stage about which I knew nothing, or very little.

My mother died at 75, my husband's father died at 75. I mean, a lot of our friends had been ill. Some had died recently, and I just thought, I don't know what the 70s are like. So, you know, and there was Beth, it was 100. And I thought, well, she must know what that landscape is like. So I gave her a call and asked her if she'd like to get together. And, you know, being such a pragmatist, she said, well, it's COVID, you know, let's go for a walk.

So we did. Oh, it was a huge gift. Every Wednesday at 3.3.30, we would get together. We walked blocks and blocks in those days. We had her notebooks and we sauntered. We talked about all sorts of things, often, very personal things. And so right from the beginning, I had this trusting sense that these stories had validity. and I was so grateful also to have the opportunity in those strange times

because here I was caged in this house, beautiful as it is to me. The roads near Beth's place are wide and quiet. There's no sidewalk here, but traffic is pretty light. Marilyn says Beth usually had enough energy. for about an hour of walking. She's brisk, upright. She likes to get her steps in, her miles in. We walked side by side facing forward, not looking at each other.

And I've always felt that is a wonderful invitation to conversation. You can talk about very deep things without having to meet each other's eye. I had lost my daughter when Marilyn and I started having times together so there were lots of ways that this was a gift to me to be able to have someone come and want to talk about all sorts of things

and with freedom That's the wonderful part about this, is the trust we had in one another. The walks continued mostly around the neighborhood. And then after that, I got sick, and I couldn't walk very much. And so she would come and pick me up and drive me to what became our favorite spot on the river, and we would sit on a park bench and talk. Marilyn developed something called giant cell arteritis. It can cause aneurysms, blindness, and dementia.

But for Marilyn, the most immediate effect was caused by the steroids she had to take to treat the condition. I think I got all of the consequences for high-dose steroids, including steroid-induced dementia. I couldn't walk without falling over. My skin was so thin. I was bleeding all the time. it was a year and a half of really, really difficult times. And I was still driving when a hundred and three. Yes, yes, you were my chauffeur.

Yes, those were grisly times for you. They were, but you always made them nice. You heard that right, Beth became the driver. She kept her driver's license until this past year. She had bought herself a zippy little Toyota Yaris for her 100th birthday. She drove all her life, and she drove sports cars. She drove sports cars up until she was 99. Oh, my goodness, my husband, my two sons, were deeply into sports cars.

Oh, my goodness. We always noticed when a special car was passing. So I lived with it all the time. She would pull up to the turning circle in front of the garage, and she would have on her driving gloves and her little pillow at her back, and she was sitting on a pillow, and she had her hand on the gear shift. And she obviously loved driving so much that in a way it felt like a privilege to be a passenger. At their favorite place to stop, a little park on the banks of the Catarocque River,

there's a bench that overlooks the water. It's right next to a monument to the Irish workers who died building the Rideau Canal. The two friends would drink some hot tea, and Beth might bring biscuits or fruit. Marilyn was conscious of the roll reversal. It was hard for me. You know, I started to feel dependent on this person who was 30 years older than me, But she never made me feel that way. She was never solicitous or hovering or, you know, hypervigilant or all of those things that people tend to do around people who are going through some sort of physical difficulty.

You know, I think in a way it deepened our friendship because it made me the more vulnerable one, although I was the younger one. It was so natural and comfortable, and, you know, it was a joy. And we went down by the water. There were lovely vistas that we enjoyed together, and along with the birds and the flocks of birds and the boats and that sort of thing. Beth was a big part of keeping my spirits up, not consciously. I mean, it's not like she delivered, you know, a spirit-lifting dose every week. But that relationship and knowing that at her age, she had endured lots of things.

And it sort of gives you, you know, faith that you're going to come out the other end. I mean, for a while I was blind. And I did come out the other end And my brain is fine And I can see and I can walk And yay You know what's funny Tony Colette hates watching horror movies

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you'll hear why she keeps returning to the genre she's afraid of. That's on cue with me, Tom Power. Follow wherever you get your podcasts, including on YouTube. Oh, that's beautiful. Yes. And it looks just like you. Back at Beth's place, Marilyn's admiring a new hoodie that a friend sent to Beth. Really?

Yes. Because it looks hand-made. Both women have an eye for fashion and appreciate art. This is where you do your work. This is where I. play. The entire dining room table is filled with best latest art projects. There are small bits of torn up Japanese paper, postage stamps, pieces of cardboard. I'm very aware that I need this kind of a space therapeutically. Beth had a career as an occupational therapist, which began during

the Second World War. She taught art therapy for years at Concordia University, and even after she retired, used art therapy to treat veterans with PTSD on the military base in Kingston. It was my wartime experience in the military hospital where at first I learned that I had to do something beyond the therapy I was providing for those incredible men and women. And so I can remember. going in to Montreal to indulge myself in music. And then next thing I knew, I was taking art classes. I think that became the beginning of using passions to help us through this at times all too strange world. And so I've done that all my life. So she would, you know, pass her dining room table and she would, you know, pick some twigs and maybe one stone in the middle and some piece of paper somewhere under the twigs.

I pull the paper out from the big piece. And when she was happy with it, she would take it to her side table and she would live with it for a few days, a few weeks. she would photograph it and then she would take it to the table and dismantle it and then of course after the collages came the stamps I mean that just completely, to use a very old-fashioned phrase, blew my mind. So much of my art is very spontaneous.

Beth shows off some of these stamp collages made from postage stamps of all different colors and patterns glued to a plywood backing. On the easel in the corner of the dining room there's a turtle-shaped collage and one that looks like a teddy bear. I mean, who would do that? Who would think of that? I think it's a sign of her deeply creative self and her passion. It seems a bit cliche to say that having passions can keep you feeling young, but in this case, it seems true.

Oh, there isn't any doubt in my mind that we have to have these special interests that in many ways are helping us through. some very strange days. Marilyn says she's learned so much from Beth about what it means to have a full life no matter what your age. She discovered some of those lessons during their drives by the river. I was the vulnerable one

who couldn't do anything with my body or my mind and she was the one who was totally with it mentally, physically, still driving, still doing everything she wanted to do. And I think that had a power effect on my sense of aging, that it doesn't matter how old you are. It matters how you live

and what you do with whatever frailties or vulnerabilities you have. And at that moment, when she was 103, she was absolutely capable of, you know, coming and picking me up and making a tea and taking me out to the river. I couldn't do that for her. The two women have also spent time thinking and talking about the nature of true friendship. John O'Donohue is one of Beth's favorite poets and philosophers. He wrote a wonderful book called Anamkara. He believes very strongly in the power of friendship. And Anamkata is a Celtic word, and it is what, in the past, an Irish person would call their teacher.

And gradually that came to be, it's what you would call. call your soul friend, your spirit friend, a friend who you're so close to. Anna Kara, soul friend, is an incredible description of our relationship. It has great depths, but great breads as well, because one cares about each other. It's soul-mending, soul-binding, soul-binding, soul. wrapping. It's this deepening friendship that Marilyn has chronicled in her new book, Walking with Beth. Well, I think the book isn't really about aging. It's about living well to the end. Whatever shape that end takes. And I think a lot in the book about, well,

you know, is it going to be this? Is it going to be a heart attack? Is it going to be cancer? Is it going to be slow? Is it going to be fast? I'm going to be hit by a bus. And what really bugs me as a writer is that I can't write the ending to my own story or to Beth's. Marilyn admits to me that she worries about losing Beth a lot. Are you okay? While I'm visiting, she's quick to make sure our tea time

doesn't go on too long, so Beth doesn't over-exert herself. We probably have 10 minutes. For now, Beth and Marilyn will continue to get together. If not for their walks, then at least for a carefully laid out bit of tea and nibbles. There are always

grapes. They're always nuts. There are my favorite, very plain biscuits. And you used to have ginger snaps. And I love the flavor of ginger snaps. We do try to visit every couple of weeks. Every single time I come away uplifted. And I don't want to lose that.

Basically, you know, we never know what the future is. You know, even when we're 20, we don't know what the future is. 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 100. You don't know. You take the moments that are given you in the moment, and that's what we're still doing. Holy. Who made?

Really? It's beautiful, right? Thanks to the current's Alison Mee. for bringing us that story. Marilyn Simon's new book is called Walking with Beth, Conversations with my 100-year-old friend, and a happy birthday to Marilyn. She just turned 76 years old yesterday. You've been listening to the current podcast. My name's Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca slash podcasts.