‘Helen and the Bear’ Doc Chronicles a Decades-Long Love Affair As It Reaches Its Final Chapter

“I would not change a year of our lives. Thank you for marring me,” says former U.S. Congressman and lawyer Pete McCloskey, 96, to his wife, Helen H. McCloskey, 70, in the new documentary about their endearing and enduring partnership, Helen and The Bear. “Thank you for marrying me,” she responds.

That kind of exchange happens often in the film – their short, sweet little gesture to show how their appreciation hasn’t faded all these decades later.

The film, directed by Alix Blair – Helen’s niece on her sister’s side – makes its world premiere at Toronto’s Hot Docs Festival this week and explores the relationship between the free-spirited restless “hippie” and the learned Korean war-vet-turned-politician – the first Republican to speak out against the Vietnam War and call for Nixon’s impeachment. The two bond over their love of nature, the environment and conservation, and support for environmental legislation in the 1970s. In 2007, McCloskey became a Democrat. 

The pair owned and operated an organic farm in Northern California for 30 years, retiring from farming in 2020. Pete has since had a stroke and Helen is now his primary caregiver. In the film, we witness profound love, but also Helen’s struggle with the confines of traditional marriage. 

“I love him but don’t like marriage much,” she writes in her journal, one of many entries Blair uses. Helen has a six-year relationship on the side with a woman, but Pete – nicknamed “The Bear” – and Helen’s bond is unshakeable. They still flirt, hold hands, lie on each other, spoon, regularly ell each other “I love you” and enjoy adventures – like taking magic mushrooms on a recent anniversary. 

“One thing I believe is important about this documentary is it destroys the myth of what relationship is supposed to look like when you’re older,” Blair says of Helen and the Bear. “In mainstream media, we have this myth of you’re only allowed to be in love and affectionate and touching and sexy when you’re like young. I want to reject that wholeheartedly.” 

Both Helen and Blair hopped on Zoom to talk with Zoomer about the doc, facing their mortality and the unconventional bond Pete and Helen share. 

 

KAREN BLISS: Alix, why did you think Helen and Pete’s love story would make a good documentary? 

ALIX BLAIR: I’m not sure at the beginning that I did know that. I’ve had Helen on this pedestal as my cool aunt most of my entire life. We would visit California from the midwest infrequently, and she would just be this larger than life, magical, figure to me and my family.

Then a few years ago, I moved here.   

When I approached Helen and Pete … I was interested in exploring Pete’s career in a way that I had taken for granted with him as a family member. But, almost immediately, I realized how much more deeply interested I was in their relationship. And of course, being a family member, I had heard rumours and stories along the way about Helen, and what was part of Helen’s life. 

The way most stories, I think, in documentary films are done, you come from a place of personal curiosity or something that has personally affected you. And so, thinking I was going to make this very linear political story, I just fell in love with their love, felt so humbled by how in love they are at this stage in their marriage. They are just so wildly in love. 

 

KB: The film addresses the 26-year age gap in the marriage by showing their personalities and their love for each other and their playfulness. Helen, is that key to how your love has lasted? 

HELEN McCLOSKEY: Definitely, because Pete and I were friends before we were married. And we were friends before we were lovers. And, I mean, really good friends. We traveled together. He would come on to me and I’d laugh at him and shoo him away. And we would share hotel rooms when we went skiing. One time, he came upon an old girlfriend while we were skiing and informed me that I could find another room to stay in that night. Those are the kinds of things that is just a really solid palship, really deep friendship. So there was always a foundation of best friends-ness and humour. But then, when we got together, that just carried through because that was part of the fabric of our friendship and our love. It was when we worked together professionally on projects when he was in Congress that the spark grew because we worked really well together on serious matters. 

 

KB: It’s really sweet to see you two cuddle. The common perception is that doesn’t continue in marriages, especially this late in life. 

HMC: It’s a single bed phase of life for most couples. Part of that too is we both love the outdoors. We’ve done innumerable hikes in the High Sierra during the summer and traveled in our little ancient Sprinter van 32 days at a time through eight states with five dogs. When you’re in that environment and enjoying those kinds of things, sleeping together and being close and not bathing for days and hiking and all that, it creates a whole wonderful way of being that’s super comfortable, and then the physical affection is just an integral part of that. 

 

KB: Those are things you typically do when you are younger. Maybe if you’ve got kids, you’re not going to go camping for a month. 

HMC: Yes. But you see, you just said something really important, Pete and I don’t have children. And so, that gave us a space and lack of responsibility, for lack of a better term, but a very real consideration that allowed for us to continue to live as two utterly immature people.

 

KB: You had a six-year affair with a woman.  Typically, a marriage wouldn’t last through that. You call it “a second teenage burst.” Pete viewed it as you having two marriages and he couldn’t really deal with it.  There are men and women who suppressed their sexuality for the sake of their marriage or other reasons. It’s a different time now as well. What do you say to the Zoomer readers who, even in their seventies, maybe even later, don’t feel like they’ve embraced their true selves? 

HMC:  That’s a really hard question because there’s so little support for that in society writ large. It’s so ironic because wasn’t it Kinsey, whenever he did his studies of sexuality in the 50s, was it? And he said that most people are on a spectrum of sexuality. Not everybody is 100 per cent heterosexual or 100 per cent homosexual and that that spectrum can change at different times in your life. And I always felt that way. I never felt one way or the other super strongly as an identity. And, fortunately for me, Pete could ride that out.  I did make it very plain to the person that I was involved with that I was not ever leaving him. That was absolutely clear from the get-go. I had to do what I had to do because I felt strongly that I had to explore that side of me. And, fortunately for me, because I am married to a man who is 100 per cent heterosexual, really, he’s the extraordinary one. 

 

KB: Alix, your aunt wrote in her journal, at one point, “I guess I want everything.” Sometimes when you want everything, you hurt people. Are there any lessons that you took from reading her journals and exploring and doing this documentary? 

AB:  Yes, I tell her all the time, but just tremendous gratitude to Helen for trusting me or being open to the chaos and wilderness that this might be by letting someone she’s related to read a bulk of her journals. I just thought bravery, and that it’s a tremendous kindness also to believe in my vision to be collaborating with me on that. And I would say certainly one of the ways Helen and Pete together have been such a big teacher to me is to expose binaries I was holding in myself, especially around what forgiveness looks like and how much bigger forgiveness can be. I had some pretty immature ideas about what you’re supposed to do in love and what relationship is supposed to look like. And part of my genesis for this project was that curiosity of like, “Gosh, I want what they have. May I be so lucky in my 70s, 80s and 90s to love someone this way and be loved by someone this way. And so what do you do to get there?” 

One of my other curiosities was like, “Is moving through pain in a relationship part of what’s necessary to get to the other side, to put the work in?” Theirs is not a superficial love story by any means.  

 

KB: Many couples do not have a conversation about death: where do you want to be buried?; do you want to be cremated?; what is life going to be like alone? You and Pete talk about it very naturally.

HMC: Well, in my case, I was very lucky to have a mother who was a Right To Die advocate. She worked hard on the right for people to end their lives on their terms with medical intervention … So death was something I was used to talking about, especially with her. But, with Pete, we did our wills ages ago together and would periodically review and change them, which everybody should do. 

I had a will from age 21 on just because I had pets, and I wanted to make sure I thought about if I got hit by a bus. A lot of people are very averse to thinking about their own death and I think about it all the time. I remember reading a book when I was young by Carlos Castaneda. It was called Journey to Ixtlan. And it was a wonderful series about consciousness and this young guy training with a Yaqui Indian in Mexico. And the Yaqui Indian says to him “Always use death as your advisor.”  So if you’re coming to a decision in your life, this hard decision, what do I want to do here? Imagine yourself on your deathbed at 90. What would you like to see that at that moment you were brave enough to do? And so use your death as your guide and your friend and your advisor. And I really took that to heart. That became a guiding principle of mine.

And Pete has lost so many people in the Korean War. He’s no stranger to death. And so I don’t think we had the usual total aversion to talking about it and thinking about it and preparing about it. Now, that being said, Pete is not in the slightest bit interested in all the sort of details – that’s usually been left up to me. But those were bases we’ve covered and talked about. And being really aware of your death is a very life-affirming meditation because it makes you live more in a moment where you’re viewing things as important and not something to be put off or trivial. Brings you into the now.

 

KB: Pete had a stroke. It can be very hard, very taxing, to take care of someone after that. How are you doing? 

HMC: Well, it’s hard. Right now he’s in bed in our bedroom … and he’s definitely going down. Good days and bad days. He’s just such a remarkable guy, though, because he still maintains his bawdy sense of humour. I mean, today I had friends come by and one of them in particular he thinks is quite the treat and, perks up and he’s probably one of the easiest people in the world to take care of for that reason. At the same time, it is extremely taxing. I’m basically under house arrest because he is in hospice, but I am his full-time caretaker. They just come by once a week for half an hour. And it’s a very hard thing to see the person you love become more physically debilitated. Luckily, in my case, his mind has remained really good, although in recent days he’s doing what I call ‘crossing the veil.’

 

KB: Can you expand on that?

HMC: He’s gone through periods in the past couple of months where he’ll be talking to people who have passed. And I find it just absolutely fascinating. I don’t view it in the language that even hospice sometimes uses, which is “delusion.” I don’t view it that way at all. I think when people are transitioning, there’s so much about that we don’t know because we won’t know until we’re in that state. And those are altered states of consciousness that have great validity.  

I mean, one day, a couple of months ago, he was asked to participate in an amicus brief to the Supreme Court … And as I finished typing it up and sending it off by email to the other two attorneys, Pete says to me, ”How do we pay the clerks of the Supreme Court?” And I said, “Well, we don’t have to. That’s their job.” And he said, “No, I’m talking about the clerk who’s standing next to you.”

And I was like, “Oh.” I said, “Well, we don’t have to pay him either, because he’s part of

the team.” You know, I just sort of roll with that, because … I don’t know what he’s seeing. He may be seeing a clerk from the Supreme Court.

 

KB: We’ve heard how Alix feels about her cool aunt. Tell me your view of your talented niece and her ability to tell your story.

HMC: Well, I’ve always felt that Alix has a very curious mind with real interest and ability to set herself aside and see what she’s looking at without judgment, and that’s an incredibly wonderful quality. People often have to die before things come out about their lives, and here I am, I’m 70 years old, I realize that I’m in the last trimester of my life, I feel that that gives me great power in a way. 

I can’t use my favourite expletive, but eff the world; I’m not going to be long on it, and why not let people know how we’ve lived and the challenges we’ve gone through and the labyrinths we’ve traveled together? Why wait until somebody dies to then not be able to have questions answered. I mean, who cares, we’re going to die, and so it’s sort of a freeing thing. I wanted her to know more fully about me, and I trust her implicitly. She’s got total integrity and really is an incredibly honest and straightforward and conscientious and conscious human being and I felt honoured to give her my crazy journals to read. 

Helen and the Bear is screening at the Hot Docs Festival in Toronto on Sunday April 28, with a second screening on Tuesday April 30. Visit the Hot Docs website for screening times and ticket information. 

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