I am reluctant to share or discuss personal matters in this format for various concerns. First, who wants to be considered a whiner. Second, I consider the recipients a somewhat captive audience so unburdening personal stories might be indulgent. Third, I worry my life is not that interesting, so what I have been focused on the past week ends up trite when shared. No one wants to be trite. Fourth, this newsletter is ultimately a way to connect and throwing out somber personal stories seems hackneyed and selfish. Fifth, I should use this format for business pursuits.
The problem is that this week I have been consumed with memories of my late wife. It could be that the estate planning at the firm has sparked this focus. It could be her birthday or the one-year mark that is approaching but I have been flooded with thoughts of her before she was really sick. It took some effort, but I rifled through a stack of illness memories to unearth the memories of us prior to her demise. This mental exercise took some time, but what I discovered was the reason we connected. This was my person because she was funny. Finding the person that you can be somewhere with and see something that you can’t wait to confirm that she saw the same funny thing. That was her. Shutting the car doors then, “Ok, did you see this?” Irreverent and self-effacing, she could take a joke and give a joke. She never took herself or her illness too seriously often making the demeanor of a doctor visit seem ill suited to her easy laugh. She knew what terminal meant and often we would be going to sleep when we would laugh at the horrific absurdity of it all. A recurring joke was the insistence of the pregnancy test at the emergency room. The idea that she could be pregnant after the chemical onslaught she endured always made us look at each other after they took the test and laugh. We would discuss the chemically enhanced super baby we would have listing various powers provided by years of chemo. Only to be let down when the nurse would arrive with the news, she was not pregnant. Hilarious. Laughter is medicinal and a welcomed respite to horrible news.
Finding the joy, fun or light in a dark room requires effort. It is much easier to allow the dark to consume you, but the true courage comes when in the midst of suffocating darkness, you look around and muster the strength to strike a match. My experience has been that the smallest of light extinguishes an avalanche of darkness.
Albert R. Hartley