and of what administrator of
the universe thy existence
clouds from thy mind, it will
go and thou
- Marcus Aurelius:
Meditations
We were drinking coffee and chatting as we
try to do once a week before the workday begins. For a year or more it was Wednesday, but for
the past few months, it has been Thursday’s at 7AM. There usually is no agenda, no specific
topic…Bill and I just chat about whatever flows through the liquid chemistry of
our minds.
One week, it’s predominantly a listening
time for me…another week; I might do more of the chatting. No matter how the conversation goes, it is a
dialogue, a give and take. There is a conscious
sense this ‘early morning coffee’ break has little to do with the coffee…in
many ways, it is transcendent from the topics we share. I think that’s what happens with friends…you
know, the unspoken so much more that what is said.
Bill is a physician, and a specialist in
the management of chronic pain. Our
common professional interest is persistent back and neck pain. We quietly chat about business…families…a
little politics, and frequently “…life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness…”
Pursuit,
now there is a word. It suggests the
journey, not the final accomplishment…it suggests, in some ways, we have a
sense for the ride, whatever it might be, but are a little unclear what the
destination might be… after all, what is “…it all about Alfie?” We smile about that…
The topics...
This week I chatted with him about one of
the paradoxes of passing the Medicare barrier – something, by the way, he
experienced a fair number of years ago.
I was excited because I now qualified for
the ‘Silver Sneaker’ program, one of the benefits of my newly acquired Medicare
Plus status. In particular, one of the
perks is a paid membership in any one of 20 or so fitness centers in the San
Diego area.
While for me an exciting opportunity, for
those Medicare accountants, it is a small price to pay if they can keep me out
of the doctor’s office and away from expensive medical treatments.
The paradox? Sixty-five seems a bit late to
provide this kind of service, because certain health/illness barriers have
already been passed by millions of folk.
It would seem the smart money would start programs like this when people
were in their forties. It is a strange
system…we buy insurance, betting we are going to be sick and Insurance Company’s
sell it, betting we’re not! I digress…I LOVE THIS PROGRAM!!
Bill talked a little about his week and an
impending surgery his wife was facing, I talked about work and a weekend I had
spent in Truckee, California. The topics
weren’t really important…the care and protection we feel in these brief moments
of human connection are what we have come to appreciate in one another.
Human connection – small talk. I mentioned Molly and I had been to the
movies on the weekend. We were watching
the previews, when totally unexpectedly, there was a promo for Les Miserables,
to be released in December. I grew up in
a musical home, but it was, to put it politely, an economically austere
home. We loved to listen to musicals on
the record player, but often listened to studio recordings because we couldn’t
afford the original cast albums.
Over the years, I have attended musical
theater as often as I could…Les Miserables, one of the most compelling and
moving theatrical experiences of my life.
This love for theater was shared by my sister Nancy.
The plaintiff and heart wrenching song
accompanied the movie trailer, “I dreamed a dream…” – the stinging words of
hope and a life lost…through the backdrop Victor Hugo’s epic story of a better
world to come. Nancy and I loved this
show, and with the quickness of an unexpected lightening strike to the heart, I
was instantly transported to a private world of images of the life my sister
led and moments we had shared. While the
silver screen played, a different and richer movie unfolded in my heart as
unnoticed tears streamed down my face.
The preview ended, and as suddenly as I had slipped away, I returned
wiping the now discerned tears from eyes.
Suddenly, the water deepened...
Bill and I were just about done with our
coffee when I mentioned this experience.
I expressed that as life has moved on, I have lost a number of people
who were meaningful in my life. My
mother and dad, some friends and mentors, but that it seemed to me the loss of
my sister was different.
In trying to find the words for the indescribable,
I said, “There was a thread of continuity with her that was rich and
deep.” It was not that I did not, nor
that I don’t mourn the loss of my parents, but in many ways, I really didn’t
know them in the way I knew her…they were; well…they were…parents – some
barriers un-crossable.
I grieve the loss of friends and mentors
who deeply touched my life, and yet there wasn’t the familiarity, the
incidental hours, the unexpected moments of a freely lived life that I shared
with my sister.
Bill then began to tell me of a friend that
he had from a child and how he had a ‘thread’ with him. It seemed this word had found a different
meaning for us…a way, at least in our communications that brought a small
degree of deeper understanding from which had emerged a common recognition – or
at least as common a perception as two people can find.
In the give and take of our conversation
about these two people in our lives, a distant gaze filled our eyes as the
movie trailers of these two very special people played full tilt. We had, over coffee, given one another
permission to feel and express and share – as much as two people can – a
private world through a collective experience.
As we dipped in and out of the private
worlds we had entered, we acknowledged a sense of longing…a hunger, neither for
life nor experience passed, but for what was yet to come, or at least what we
desired to come.
The point...
It is these small and unguarded moments in
life that make the journey worth the effort.
With all of the distractions that fill our days…all of the places to go,
people to meet…all the books to read, films to see, music to listen to…there
is something infinitely more meaningful.
It is those quiet and small moments of the human heart, the ones that
come so unexpectedly over early morning coffee.
- ted
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