A Pretty Good Hand
Music: When You Know
Artist: Shawn Colvin
Shared by: Christine for Michael
“This song still makes me cry rivers of sad tears, but also rivers of happy, grateful ones.”
I wasn't interested.
I had already decided I should stay single for a while when mutual friends invited Michael and me to their place for dinner. I wasn't prepared for the surprising man in the ombre denim shirt who had a disconcertingly-direct gaze. Nor could I figure out why I had to keep reminding myself not to touch this stranger while sitting on the same couch after the meal.
The song 'When You Know', which featured in the movie 'Serendipity', spoke to us. We were engaged and had bought a house together within five months of meeting.
”When you know that you know who you love, you can't deny it.
Or go back, or give up, or pretend that you don't buy it.”
Not only were we a May-December romance, but we came from different worlds. I learned that his early life was marked by poverty, untreated abuse injuries, and homelessness, while I had been born into safety and suburbia. Despite not having many role models except the ones he found in the libraries that sheltered him and nourished his spirit as a child, he became a man of great capacity for love with a strict code of honour that guided his every word and deed.
“When you feel in your skin in your bones and the hollow
of your heart, there's no way you can wait 'til tomorrow.
When there isn't any doubt about it once you come this close
cause you know and you know that you know.”
I saw a social media post recently that said, "marry someone who will sit with you in the hospital" and we did. He sat with me through seizures and fainting, impacted wisdom teeth, tonsillectomy, vertigo, and chicken pox. After 20 years of marriage, in 2018, it was my turn when he was diagnosed with his first cancer. A year after successful treatment, a second, completely unrelated cancer was discovered during the pandemic. Although diagnosed fortuitously early, it quickly jumped to his spine and became terminal.
Why him? I raged over and over at the injustice of the bookends of his life until someone commented, "During childhood, he had no one. This time, he has you."
”When it's clear this time you've found the one, you'll never let him go
'Cause you know and you know that you know.”
Michael died in late 2022 while I held his hand. This song still makes me cry rivers of sad tears, but also rivers of happy, grateful ones.
Never one to feel sorry for himself, Michael wrote in one of his many notes, "Even though life has sometimes dealt me some lousy cards, I always ended up with a pretty good hand."
We both did.