Tears Are Inevitable. So Is Fun.

Can you enjoy yourself in difficult times?

.Photograph: shutterstock Stock Photo ID: 2413851059 Photographer: Kostiantyn Voitenko  

In April  this year I bought tickets to a Pink Martini concert scheduled for October – six months away. I started crying as I clicked the button for “purchase” and continued to cry as I printed them and put the printouts in my husband’s top drawer, where we have kept tickets to upcoming events for the last 47 years.

I’ve never been great about making plans for the distant future, but by now, well into the Third Age, I’m much better about it. I even enjoy making plans and anticipating the fun to come. This is a very popular band, which we try to see each time they come to town. Last year my husband couldn’t go. I didn’t want to miss it again, but I wasn’t convinced that we would make it this time either, so I debated for a while before I bought them.

The tickets I bought were for a wheelchair and companion seat. I knew Joel would need the wheelchair accommodation if he was able to go at all. But would he be capable of attending? That was the 64,000-dollar question.

Joel had fallen that morning. Again. As he was getting out of bed. 

He had a major fall the previous spring, which caused a subarachnoid hemorrhage, a week in a trauma unit, and a month in rehab. Although we’re lucky he’s alive, and he’s made a miraculous recovery, he’s never gotten back to his old self. In February he’d had more surgery, following which he’d been falling more often. The falls resulted in cuts, bleeding, and a dislocated finger, but nothing like the previous spring. Still, I worried, and continue to worry.

I once had a colleague who said he felt like he had pulled all the tricks out of his therapeutic bag to get a patient to change her behavior, without success. That’s how I felt with Joel about his inability to pay closer attention to what he’s doing when he stands or walks. He has physical therapy twice a week and Pilates twice a week. He’s amazingly motivated and strong, but the theme of each session is to be mindful. To pay attention. To make sure he is balanced fully before he takes a step. But he moves before he thinks, before he is settled in place, before his body can catch up with his brain. And then he falls.

I am constantly prepared for the next terrible moment. I have a bag packed in case I need to stay overnight with him at the emergency room. Our son and Joel’s neurologist are on speed dial on my phone. Our finances are organized, more or less. I have a funeral home picked out and Joel and I have discussed funeral and burial arrangements.

And yet here I was buying tickets to a show that I might end up going to without him. I cry at the idea. I couldn’t imagine going to Pink Martini without Joel. It’s a fun and funny group we love. Together. A shared experience. If he wasn’t with me, it wouldn’t be the same. I told myself that if he couldn’t go, I’d just sell the tickets. It wouldn’t be hard. The performance is always sold out, which was why I was buying the tickets so far in advance in the first place.

Still, I hesitated. And then, I remembered the first time we made long-term plans together, and I heard his voice in my head, loud and clear. We had been dating about five months, and we were away for the weekend, staying at a small inn in Connecticut in an area he knew well from his years in grad school and as a chaplain at Yale University. He took me to a very popular, small, cozy inn, where he’d always wanted to stay, but we couldn’t get a room for the rest of the summer.

“We’re taking reservations for next summer now,” said the clerk behind the counter, who was trying to be helpful. Joel looked at me. I shook my head. How could we make reservations so far in advance? We didn’t know if we would still be together in a month, so what guarantee did we have for a year?

He took my hand as we walked out and down the steps overlooking a beautiful, peaceful lake. “Let’s take our bikes and go for a ride around the lake,” he said. We unloaded the bikes off the back of the car and started what turned out to be one of the most pleasant bike rides I’d ever taken. When we got back to the car, he said, “I know you’re afraid to make a commitment for something that far away, but we can make the reservations and if we’re not still together, one of us can use them. Or we can cancel them or sell them to a friend. You won’t be stuck. But if we don’t make them now, we probably won’t be able to come here next year if we’d like to.”

We put a deposit down for the following July.

Two months later we were making plans to live together. Five years later we got married, and six years after that, we had a baby. Each change required a leap of faith. We were two commitment-phobes holding hands, jumping into space, trusting that we could somehow find a way to get through. And we managed to have 47 complicated, complex, and deeply meaningful years.

My April gamble paid off. Joel’s health improved. He didn’t even need a wheelchair but walked into the theater with his walker and sat in a regular chair. Still, the moment was bittersweet. As one does at these concerts, I struck up a conversation with the woman in the row in front of us, who was sitting next to what was probably the only empty seat in the theater. Her husband, it turned out, had also been ill when she bought the tickets, but he had died several weeks ago. With what I considered to be incredible bravery, she kept the seats and came to the show alone, her husband’s presence palpable in that vacant chair. I handed her one of my now ever-present Kleenexes as she and I cried through the second half of the show.

Somewhere during the second act, Pink Martini sang one of their beloved songs, “Cante e Dance.” It’s in Portuguese, but before performing it, the band’s lead singer, China Forbes, told us that it was a song about not knowing what’s going to happen, but trying to make the most of what we’ve got right now. 

In the Third Age, we really don’t know what next week, next January, or next October will be like. All we can do is prepare for the worst and do everything we can to work for the best. That’s what Joel and I are doing. And for now, we’re still holding hands