This is the Reading Instruction Show. I'm your host as always Dr. Andy Johnson.
The title of today's podcast is called Endings, Happiness, and Love. So this is a story about endings
and I have no idea why I'm writing this. I've got lots of other stuff to do,
but it's niggling in my unconscious. It sits there like a rock in my shoe. And again, I have no idea
why I'm writing this one. And maybe by writing it, I'll figure it out.
Usually morals and lessons and stories come after the story has been told. Here, here in today's story,
the lesson's up front and here's the lesson. I used to think the world existed to make me happy.
I looked for happiness and wondered why I couldn't find it. Eventually, I learned that I exist to
make others happy. And in so doing, I discovered that happiness had been there all the time waiting
for me. Now I wonder how I could have been so blind back then. Let's talk about endings.
Every song has its beginning where the notes begin to plinkety-plink into the air.
And every song has its ending where the music stops and silence begins. And so must all things.
We must have our endings, pronounce points of termination, a cessation, a finale, a conclusion
without which we are left unsatisfied. We feel the weight of unending silence left hovering in
space going on and on and on. We have our various ending ceremonies. We look at dead people and say
nice things about them. We wear choir robes and funny flat hats as we sit in stuffy gymnasiums
listening to speakers, yammer on and on and on. We have final exams and divorces and last days
and retirement parties and final acts and epilogues and credits that roll over the screen.
There is the alpha and there is the omega. Genesis and the apocalypse. There was the big bang and
there is the great amen when the universe will someday collapse in upon itself.
1988. It was deafening. The roaring silence that greeted me when I came home that first night.
I had pushed her away. A woman who loved me and whom I love but didn't know it.
She made me happy, but then she didn't. So I pushed her away and so she was gone.
I came home from work. Her little shoes weren't in the closet where they had always been.
Her things weren't in the kitchen. Her pictures were gone. She wasn't there.
But the smell of her lingered faintly in the air.
I was alone. Things are and then they're not. That's the way of it.
Even though I knew it was coming, I thought I wanted it to come. I made it come. Our ending
wasn't complete. It was the 80s a different time. My good Christian friends didn't want to talk about
it, you see. I was alone. I was alone. Things are and then they're not. That's the way of it.
My parents didn't want to talk about it, you see. And my parents didn't want to talk about it, you see.
To them, we had never had the right kind of beginning.
The kind where a professional preacher man sprinkle some words on you
and then people go to a dance and get drunk. So they never acknowledged our beginning,
our middle or our end. And in complete end, something not to talk about.
So I didn't. The 80s, such a different time back then.
The students in my class today wouldn't understand. My parents, like most parents of that time,
grew up in the 40s and early 50s. They got married as soon as they possibly could.
I'm guessing a lot of young people of the time got married early because back then,
you couldn't have sex until you were married and they were all eager to get in on the party.
But there were no getting in on parties back then until you walked out of the church with rice
in your hair. And those were the rules. So people did. They got married.
You get married and then that's it. Marriage was an integral part of the culture in the small
rural community of Gransberg, Wisconsin, where I grew up and my parents grew up and my grandparents
grew up and my great grandparents grew up. You graduated from high school, went into some branch
of the service, came home, got a job, got married and went to church every Sunday for the rest of
your life. That's it. For women, you graduated from high school, got a job as you waited for
your fiance to come home from the service, got married, quit your job, then went to church
every Sunday for the rest of your life. That's it. My mother was not Bridella, but Mrs. Glenn
Johnson. That's the way it was. And if you look back in the church bulletins in the early,
in the 60s and early 70s, the women who were listed in the women's Bible study were not
them, but Mrs. Somebody Else. Their identity was quite literally not their own.
Women went from being somebody's daughter to being somebody's wife. Women were stripped of an
identity that they never had. And those who weren't Mrs. Somebody Else were Ms. Nobody.
Imagine what that must have felt like. Your whole identity was what you weren't.
Mrs. Nobody Wants to Marry Me. And in a small town where everybody knows everybody else,
every day when you left your house, you put on your Nobody Wants to Marry Me hat and you
went about your business as a secretary, school teacher, clerk or office worker.
I mentioned this because that was the Petrie dish from which I came and where my parents
still lived. That's where Mr. and Mrs. Glenn Johnson still lived. They lived there physically and
there lived within them. And parts of there also lived within me. Now, back in 1987, she and I
decided to move in together. And I thought I'd be open and honest with my parents. I told them I
was moving in with her. I tried to explain that I was tired of being happy, then not happy, then
pushing people away. I was tired of repeating the whole thing over and over and over again.
And I tried to explain that maybe this was a way of getting out of the loop.
But it was a mistake to have asked them to understand. I was wrong to expect them to
disavow an important part of who they were, of where they lived and the where that lived in them.
It's 1988 now and her smell is still lingering in the air in our apartment.
I came home and she wasn't there. Now, two years later, she would send me an invitation to her wedding
and I'm not quite sure why she sent it. She wasn't trying to be mean or vindictive. That wasn't
who she was or how she was. And I went and I'm not quite sure why. But I wanted her to be happy.
I really did. And she looked pale in her white wedding dress. Perhaps it was the stress of the
wedding or trying to lose weight to look good for the pictures. But she looked like she was wearing
a death shroud. And at that moment, I could see her laying in the white silk interior of a coffin.
And my emotions crept up on me. I wasn't expecting them. And I tried to look down so nobody could
see my eyes. I was at a wedding and I was weeping uncontrollably. Finally, mercifully, the Oregon
lady played the last strands softly and stopped. And I walked out of the church hiding my eyes,
thinking at last I had my end date. Or so I thought. Fast forward four years later 1992,
I was doing graduate work at the University of Minnesota and I ran into her. She was there taking
a graduate class. We had dinner a couple of times and we talked and we met. She had divorced her
husband. Turned out he hit her. Now this is usually the part of the movie where the guy realizes
what a complete fool he's been. And they decide to give it another try. And the ending credits roll
as they walk through the park holding hands. But apparently I was in a different movie. I hadn't
learned the lesson yet. And just like in the movie Groundhog Day, I was destined to repeat the lesson
over and over and over until I learned it. During this time around 1992, I shared the first part of
the story with her. She teared up and asked if she could keep a copy. I had heard her badly when I
pushed her away in 1988. I remember she cried and hugged me when she put the last of her things in
her car and moved out. And I could see the soul of her when she cried. The story I shared with her
helped her see that it had hurt me as well. That helped her. She didn't know that I had cried the next
day when I went to work. Why would she? And I cried when I went to choir practice without her. And I
had to resign my elementary teaching job because I wasn't functioning. And I descended into drink
and isolation. She didn't know that. I finished my degree and got a job as a literacy professor at
Mankato, Minnesota, 70 miles south of Minneapolis. It was 1996. And I went through a couple more
happy, not happy, push her away cycles. I made more women cry. And I started to really wonder,
what was wrong with me? Then I met my wife, Nancy, a lovely, strong woman who I love. And somehow,
I tricked her into marrying me. And it took us a while to figure things out. And she came to
understand that I wasn't trying to be insensitive or hurtful. I just didn't have a clue about certain
things. And I eventually came to understand how much I didn't know about so many things. And she
helped me learn the lesson. And maybe we learned some lessons together. Maybe that's the whole purpose
of relationships. Love is not just a feeling. You don't just sit back and wait for love to wash
over you. Love is also something you do. So here's the lesson another way. I used to think
relations existed to make me happy. I would get in one. But as soon as I wasn't happy, I'd leave them.
I'd enter and exit, enter and exit relationships all the while wondering why I couldn't find a
relationship that made me happy. And I learned far too late in life that relationships exist for me
to make the other person happy. And with this understanding, the relationship gives me far more
happiness than I could have ever imagined. And I realized that happiness was there all the time in
great abundance. And like Dorothy, I had the power all along. Now, most would think this is where the
story ending. And he finally figured it out. He learned how to love and happiness found him as he
found it. Again, different movie. Fast forward 29 years. I was going through one of those periods
where the movie projectionist in your head keeps replaying scenes from your past and pointing out
how incredibly stupid and insensitive you were. And sometimes you get stuck in a loop and the little
man in your head keeps hitting you over the head with his pointer telling you what a loser you are
and how you should feel bad for making other people feel bad. So I looked her up on Facebook and
don't tell me you've never done this. Facebook is a way you can quietly peek in on someone's life
to see how they're doing. And I wanted to see how she was doing. And I wanted to apologize for how
stupid and insensitive I was way back when I wanted to say I was sorry. And in the movie in my
head, she'd say that it was okay. She'd tell me that she forgave me long ago that she moved on. She'd
say that she hasn't thought about me in years and that she's in a really good place. That's the way
my movie preview was playing in my head. I eventually found her and sent her a simple hello
greeting and I waited. There was no reply. And that certainly wasn't like the person I knew 29 years
ago. A couple of months went by and I sent a couple hello messages and still no reply. So I did a
little online detective work. She had moved to a community north of Minneapolis and I did some more
searching and found something in a church bulletin about praying for her. And there was a notice about
her brother and probate court getting some of her stuff. And I found little pieces here and there and
the picture filled in. She had died of cancer. She must have been in her late 50s. And I hope she
hadn't died alone. I hope there were people around her. I wished I could have visited her one last
time to have held her hand and say I was sorry. I would have wanted that. And for some reason, again, I
cry. So what's the really big lesson here? The one where I tie it all together, where I point the
parallels existing between reading instruction teaching in life. And I don't think I have one, but I'll
say this. The world doesn't exist to make us happy. If we go around looking for people and things and
achievements or conditions to make us happy, we'll never find it. We might placate ourselves for a bit,
but we'll never find happiness. Happiness will always be just beyond our reach. We exist to make others
happy. And in doing so, we have an abundance of happiness all around us. And love isn't something
you feel. It's something you do. It's a verb. And love isn't confined to a single person or family. Love
isn't transactional. You don't love somebody because somebody does something. And you don't stop loving
because somebody does something or doesn't do something you love. That's it. No expectations. That's
the lesson. I wish my literacy professor had given me 40 years ago. This is a literacy professor, Dr.
Andy Johnson, and this has been the Reading Instruction Show.