I once told someone my younger son had never met a stranger.
I’ve used that description countless times since his first words came tumbling
out and they feigned surprise and said, very tongue in cheek, “Oh! So very
different from you!” and it made me chuckle because I can strike up a
conversation with almost anyone around me with great ease and equally great
enjoyment. I love to hear from others and to share my thoughts and perspectives
as well.
So it really comes as no surprise that I entered into what
started out as a friendly chat in line for a bathroom, but it was surprising of what came from that
chat.
When I queued up, the ‘line’ had one woman in it. She opened
the door to peer in and then closed the door. My presumption was her child was
inside. She said he’d “be a while” and I told her I would wait as I really had
to choice and I said it with a smile.
About the time my last words were spoken a large, older
woman came hurtling towards me at a pace I don’t think is her norm. She was
clearly flustered and called out, a little too loudly for the quiet store, “I
am in line next! I’ll be quick, but I am next!”
Ummmmmmm, okay.
I think she caught how aggressively she’d defended a place
in line and calmed herself a bit before continuing. She shared it was her
husband in the bathroom and he had special needs. I told her that I fully
understood, as I too had issues and was recovering from some pretty serious
surgery to help correct it and I was fine waiting for him and for her, but
walking away and coming back would be too much of a challenge. I smiled, caught
her eye and made sure she knew I was being factual and not playing on her
emotions to let me go first.
The very young and the very old will ask questions of others
that polite manners teach us not to ask throughout the majority of our years.
Somehow that learned filter degrades at a certain age and the questions are
back out there in full force. She asked me what I’d had done and while I have
not shared a whole lot of this with many folks, something compelled me to share
with her in detail. And So I did.
She got tears in her eyes and to be frank, that’s been a
common reaction with the few I’ve shared my story with, so I didn’t expect what
came from her mouth next.
“My doctor wanted me to have two of those surgeries over 30
years ago. But they wouldn’t do one without the other and I could not bring
myself to have a hysterectomy and give up being a woman, so I have lived with
it all these years. A few years ago I decided to do it and now, I am too old
and can’t have it. The success rate is too low at my age. Medicare won’t cover
it, we don’t have the money to pay for it with his (motioning to her husband)
health issues and needing a caregiver full time. I have to live with this for
the rest of my days.”
The tears fell from her eyes as she spoke. I was compelled
to hug her on the spot. This former stranger in a shoe store on the Upper West
Side embraced me back and told me I’d never regret doing this. She regretted
not doing it when she could have.
I was a bit overcome, but this was her moment, not mine, so
I willed my tears to stay in my eyes and not let them slide down my face. Two
things were deeply reinforced to me in those 6 or 7 minutes of time
Regrets come more often from what we don’t do than what we do.
Sometimes sharing bits of yourself propels you on your
journey, it doesn’t hold you back. The amazing thrust I felt from those few
minutes were, and are, tremendously forceful.
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