More Than This
One of the extraordinary pleasures in what I get to do every day is hearing other people talk about themselves. Happenstance would dictate that the vast majority of people I talk to are over 70, and while sometimes it makes me want to pick my eyes out with grapefruit spoons (because, well, sometimes I just want to talk to someone who’s in the same stage of life as me), for the most part, it makes for some truly amazing moments.
A lot of people here never cease to blow me away in some really wonderful, quiet ways, as opposed to the usual blowing away that involves asinine behavior, drunken parties and hearing my neighbor scream rude things to the Indian family playing tennis up the street.
It’s funny – I spend so much time being afraid of things. Afraid of disease, afraid of Adam getting sick or dying, afraid to have kids because I’ll love them so much that I won’t let them leave the house (or the womb) out of fear for their safety. I mean, we all have some fears, and while we don’t let them consume us, they lurk in the shadows every day. Some of them are based in reality and some of them, like the ridiculous fear I have of being homeless and drunk on the streets of New York (why, just why?), are simply silly, but they’re still there. And yet just about every day, I talk to people who’ve lived through my greatest fears and not only survived, but rebuilt an extraordinary existence.
I spend a lot of time with the elderly – more than anyone I have ever known, in fact, save for nursing home workers and retirement village entertainers – and it has truly turned out to be an unexpectedly joyful privilege. They tell me about their lives – about their heartaches and losses and triumphs – and I can’t believe how much they have lived through. It’s enough to make your head spin, or at least be very afraid to leave the house in the morning, lest you be mowed down by a garbage truck or a rogue Trans Am or, I don’t know, the plague running rampant through your neighborhood.
Roughly 75 percent of the couples I talk to are on their second marriage, and sadly, it’s rarely due to divorce. I met a man recently who had four children, three of whom were nuns scattered in convents throughout the country, while his only son died of ALS two weeks after his first wife passed away. When I met him, his second wife was going through radiation for breast cancer with a brave smile, and they held hands so tightly I thought her fingers would break. Another man, a World War II veteran, survived three typhoons in the Pacific, barely missed being carried out with the tide while shelling for cat’s eyes in China, and – 50 years later – watched his wife slowly die of cancer. And yet, he sat there with his beautiful, whip-smart second wife and they smiled at me, and laughed as they remembered the lives they had before they’d even met, when they were married to other people who moved on. It always seemed to me that listening to this kind of thing would be enough to rip your heart right out of your chest.
But talking to them, it’s nothing like that at all, but I can’t properly explain what it is like. They’re so calm and peaceful and…well, they’re so happy. I mean, they aren’t happy that their lives turned out to be nothing of what they planned when they were 25 – and trust me, not one of them has ever said that their lives turned out according to plan – but they’re content with the experiences that they had, and in the remarkable memories they made with each of their loved ones in the time that they had them, however short. Yesterday and tomorrow mean very little to how they live their lives today, and it’s just such a completely different life – albeit dangerously clichéd – than the one most of us lead that it makes you think twice, really it does.
These aren’t couples you read about in People or a national newspaper, or watch on Dateline. They aren’t celebrities, actual or manufactured, and they don’t want anything from their stories other than the pleasure of retelling them to someone who’ll listen (often I’m the first and only person to ask in a very, very long time, if ever). And it’s insanely uplifting, I swear, even though you wouldn’t think that listening to people talk about the losses that they’ve suffered would be at all. It’s just that people are nothing short of amazing in how they survive things and move on with their lives, and there is nothing quite so hopeful as knowing that if the worst happened – if the very worst happened to any of us – that we would be able to pick up, start fresh and rebuild, while honoring the memory of what we lost.
People are really something else.
*Peter Gabriel
20 comments October 10th, 2006