When a Tie Becomes a Symbol of Love

She met him at a Christmas party. She was attending with several of her friends, fellow young career women. The party was “all the way out in Long Island,” which made it a bit of a trek for these Manhattanites. Regardless, all the girls from the office were going, so it seemed like a necessary excursion, both personally and professionally. This sounds quite ordinary to our ears today, but back in the 1930s and 1940s, this was a bit more unique for a young woman.

Going to the party turned out to be a lot more than a wise networking move. A friend of hers introduced her to a friend of his. It was a formal party, but he wasn’t wearing a tie. He had aspirations to join the military before he settled down with a job in the city. I don’t know if sparks flew from these very first moments, but that encounter turned out to be far more life-changing than either of them could have imagined at that moment.

In the months that followed, they started seeing each other more. At first, it was just through gatherings with mutual friends. As time kept ticking on, they started spending time together, just the two of them. Just a few years would pass before they wed. He joined the military but returned to her safely. As once lightly discussed on first dates and in early conversations, after that, he settled down with an office job in the city.

During his career, wearing a tie was a bit of a joke.

There was a running gag in his office. He worked hard and had a strong work ethic, so it was difficult to poke at the results he produced. He did not enjoy buttoning that top button and wearing a tie, but he was otherwise a flawless employee. His supervisors had a question they’d regularly ask.

“George, where’s your tie?” they’d ask every so often.

“Oh, you know,” he said, like he always did, “back in my desk drawer.”

He’d make jokes about how it wouldn’t get dirty there or that it wouldn’t get in his way. He sparked a fair bit of light-hearted tie-related rebellion among his coworkers. With more people embracing freedom from those pesky neckties, it became even harder for supervisors to keep poking fun at how his tie always rested peacefully in his desk drawer. He’d come home and share these stories with his wife, who also worked in an office and rode the subway every day.

As they got older, some dark humor started up.

Amid nights out with friends in downtown Manhattan, a dark joke emerged. He said it again and again.

“If you bury me in a tie, I’ll come back and haunt you.”

For him, making jokes about dying first wasn’t completely bizarre. They both lived through full careers of the New York City grind. Back then, life expectancy for men was significantly lower than it was for women. The gap was bigger than it is today. These numbers are starting to collide with each other as time goes on and our society becomes more equal, but back then, it was a near certainty for couples that there would be a widow and not a widower. For them, it was just a likely fact of life.

He would make this joke lightly. She would grin and threaten to do it anyway.

It’s hard to imagine joking about what happens after you’re gone. If you’re only in your mid-twenties like me or even your thirties, it’s usually just not something you think to make light of.

Time is an ephemeral thing.

Even as I write this, I know I’m not doing their love story justice. But can an outside observer really ever fully understand the depth of a bond between two people who pledge their lives to each other?

They lived together in an apartment in the city for years and years. They had two daughters, worked their careers, then eventually retired to the suburbs just north of the city that never sleeps. It sounds rather picturesque, but life always has its trials and hiccups. Along the way, there were career hiccups and lots of troubles that needed to be conquered together.

One of such problems was health. She nearly lost him again to a heart attack when they were both in their 60s, but he managed to persevere and recover. Another 20 years pass.

This isn’t the happy ending a love story deserves, but it’s the real one.

After over 50 years of marriage, the scenario they once joked about came to a dark truth. He succumbed to heart failure. She outlived him.

Amid the stark horror of dealing with the dark logistics of losing a loved one — choosing funeral flowers, calling insurance companies, and canceling auto-refill prescriptions. When I went to visit my grandmother after the day we lost my grandfather, I found her stuck on hold with their health insurance company and struggling to slog through information on changing monthly premiums.

It made my heart and my stomach sink. It hurt badly enough to lose my grandfather, but I still can’t imagine how she felt at that moment, mourning her husband of over 50 years and dealing with funeral planning. There are so many things you need to do that you never imagine having to prepare for until the moment is upon you. One of these lurid tasks is to bring clothes to the funeral parlor that your loved one will be buried in.

But even in this painful time, there was only one thing she focused her thoughts on—him.

She slipped a tie into his jacket pocket.

“I should slip a tie into his jacket pocket. He always hated them.”

As she told her relatives about her plan, the first time, it was a light but heartbreaking joke. As a few short days that felt like eternities went by, all swamped of dealing with the desensitized process of someone passing on. The day before the funeral, she had a bit more to say about her idea.

“He said he’d come back to haunt me if I buried him in a tie,” she said. “I’ll see if it works.”

The tie isn’t just a joke — it’s a symbol of love, closeness, and familiarity.

This whole story is equal parts heartwarming and lurid to me. On the one hand, everything related to death and funerals is a bit horrifying to me. The more I experience it, the more horrifying it becomes for me. But honestly, I think this is something that I need to work on in myself. I can’t be so terrified of death or losing loved ones that I can’t even bring myself to think about these things.

Amid pain and loss, my grandmother is showing how dearly she treasures my grandfather. She still talks about him in the present tense. That shift of present to past hasn’t happened yet. Even so, her head is clear enough to think of these little things that show how close they were. He was her friend as much as he was her husband. There was a closeness and familiarity there that’s necessary to joke in such a capacity.

I may be family, but I’m still an outsider when it comes to hearing about their love story and the bulk of their lives together. Since I am a bystander, since I am on the outside looking in, I can see just how much that tie meant to the two of them. It’s more than just an uncomfortable garment or a running dark joke. It shows that they were more than simply husband and wife; they were dear friends who lived their days with their lives entwined together.