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This is the Reading Instruction Show. I'm your host as always Dr. Andy Johnson.

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The title of today's podcast is called Endings, Happiness, and Love. So this is a story about endings

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and I have no idea why I'm writing this. I've got lots of other stuff to do,

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but it's niggling in my unconscious. It sits there like a rock in my shoe. And again, I have no idea

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why I'm writing this one. And maybe by writing it, I'll figure it out.

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Usually morals and lessons and stories come after the story has been told. Here, here in today's story,

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the lesson's up front and here's the lesson. I used to think the world existed to make me happy.

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I looked for happiness and wondered why I couldn't find it. Eventually, I learned that I exist to

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make others happy. And in so doing, I discovered that happiness had been there all the time waiting

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for me. Now I wonder how I could have been so blind back then. Let's talk about endings.

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Every song has its beginning where the notes begin to plinkety-plink into the air.

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And every song has its ending where the music stops and silence begins. And so must all things.

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We must have our endings, pronounce points of termination, a cessation, a finale, a conclusion

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without which we are left unsatisfied. We feel the weight of unending silence left hovering in

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space going on and on and on. We have our various ending ceremonies. We look at dead people and say

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nice things about them. We wear choir robes and funny flat hats as we sit in stuffy gymnasiums

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listening to speakers, yammer on and on and on. We have final exams and divorces and last days

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and retirement parties and final acts and epilogues and credits that roll over the screen.

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There is the alpha and there is the omega. Genesis and the apocalypse. There was the big bang and

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there is the great amen when the universe will someday collapse in upon itself.

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1988. It was deafening. The roaring silence that greeted me when I came home that first night.

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I had pushed her away. A woman who loved me and whom I love but didn't know it.

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She made me happy, but then she didn't. So I pushed her away and so she was gone.

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I came home from work. Her little shoes weren't in the closet where they had always been.

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Her things weren't in the kitchen. Her pictures were gone. She wasn't there.

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But the smell of her lingered faintly in the air.

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I was alone. Things are and then they're not. That's the way of it.

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Even though I knew it was coming, I thought I wanted it to come. I made it come. Our ending

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wasn't complete. It was the 80s a different time. My good Christian friends didn't want to talk about

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it, you see. I was alone. I was alone. Things are and then they're not. That's the way of it.

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My parents didn't want to talk about it, you see. And my parents didn't want to talk about it, you see.

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To them, we had never had the right kind of beginning.

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The kind where a professional preacher man sprinkle some words on you

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and then people go to a dance and get drunk. So they never acknowledged our beginning,

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our middle or our end. And in complete end, something not to talk about.

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So I didn't. The 80s, such a different time back then.

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The students in my class today wouldn't understand. My parents, like most parents of that time,

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grew up in the 40s and early 50s. They got married as soon as they possibly could.

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I'm guessing a lot of young people of the time got married early because back then,

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you couldn't have sex until you were married and they were all eager to get in on the party.

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But there were no getting in on parties back then until you walked out of the church with rice

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in your hair. And those were the rules. So people did. They got married.

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You get married and then that's it. Marriage was an integral part of the culture in the small

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rural community of Gransberg, Wisconsin, where I grew up and my parents grew up and my grandparents

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grew up and my great grandparents grew up. You graduated from high school, went into some branch

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of the service, came home, got a job, got married and went to church every Sunday for the rest of

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your life. That's it. For women, you graduated from high school, got a job as you waited for

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your fiance to come home from the service, got married, quit your job, then went to church

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every Sunday for the rest of your life. That's it. My mother was not Bridella, but Mrs. Glenn

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Johnson. That's the way it was. And if you look back in the church bulletins in the early,

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in the 60s and early 70s, the women who were listed in the women's Bible study were not

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them, but Mrs. Somebody Else. Their identity was quite literally not their own.

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Women went from being somebody's daughter to being somebody's wife. Women were stripped of an

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identity that they never had. And those who weren't Mrs. Somebody Else were Ms. Nobody.

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Imagine what that must have felt like. Your whole identity was what you weren't.

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Mrs. Nobody Wants to Marry Me. And in a small town where everybody knows everybody else,

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every day when you left your house, you put on your Nobody Wants to Marry Me hat and you

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went about your business as a secretary, school teacher, clerk or office worker.

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I mentioned this because that was the Petrie dish from which I came and where my parents

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still lived. That's where Mr. and Mrs. Glenn Johnson still lived. They lived there physically and

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there lived within them. And parts of there also lived within me. Now, back in 1987, she and I

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decided to move in together. And I thought I'd be open and honest with my parents. I told them I

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was moving in with her. I tried to explain that I was tired of being happy, then not happy, then

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pushing people away. I was tired of repeating the whole thing over and over and over again.

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And I tried to explain that maybe this was a way of getting out of the loop.

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But it was a mistake to have asked them to understand. I was wrong to expect them to

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disavow an important part of who they were, of where they lived and the where that lived in them.

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It's 1988 now and her smell is still lingering in the air in our apartment.

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I came home and she wasn't there. Now, two years later, she would send me an invitation to her wedding

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and I'm not quite sure why she sent it. She wasn't trying to be mean or vindictive. That wasn't

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who she was or how she was. And I went and I'm not quite sure why. But I wanted her to be happy.

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I really did. And she looked pale in her white wedding dress. Perhaps it was the stress of the

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wedding or trying to lose weight to look good for the pictures. But she looked like she was wearing

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a death shroud. And at that moment, I could see her laying in the white silk interior of a coffin.

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And my emotions crept up on me. I wasn't expecting them. And I tried to look down so nobody could

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see my eyes. I was at a wedding and I was weeping uncontrollably. Finally, mercifully, the Oregon

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lady played the last strands softly and stopped. And I walked out of the church hiding my eyes,

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thinking at last I had my end date. Or so I thought. Fast forward four years later 1992,

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I was doing graduate work at the University of Minnesota and I ran into her. She was there taking

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a graduate class. We had dinner a couple of times and we talked and we met. She had divorced her

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husband. Turned out he hit her. Now this is usually the part of the movie where the guy realizes

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what a complete fool he's been. And they decide to give it another try. And the ending credits roll

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as they walk through the park holding hands. But apparently I was in a different movie. I hadn't

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learned the lesson yet. And just like in the movie Groundhog Day, I was destined to repeat the lesson

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over and over and over until I learned it. During this time around 1992, I shared the first part of

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the story with her. She teared up and asked if she could keep a copy. I had heard her badly when I

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pushed her away in 1988. I remember she cried and hugged me when she put the last of her things in

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her car and moved out. And I could see the soul of her when she cried. The story I shared with her

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helped her see that it had hurt me as well. That helped her. She didn't know that I had cried the next

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day when I went to work. Why would she? And I cried when I went to choir practice without her. And I

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had to resign my elementary teaching job because I wasn't functioning. And I descended into drink

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and isolation. She didn't know that. I finished my degree and got a job as a literacy professor at

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Mankato, Minnesota, 70 miles south of Minneapolis. It was 1996. And I went through a couple more

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happy, not happy, push her away cycles. I made more women cry. And I started to really wonder,

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what was wrong with me? Then I met my wife, Nancy, a lovely, strong woman who I love. And somehow,

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I tricked her into marrying me. And it took us a while to figure things out. And she came to

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understand that I wasn't trying to be insensitive or hurtful. I just didn't have a clue about certain

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things. And I eventually came to understand how much I didn't know about so many things. And she

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helped me learn the lesson. And maybe we learned some lessons together. Maybe that's the whole purpose

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of relationships. Love is not just a feeling. You don't just sit back and wait for love to wash

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over you. Love is also something you do. So here's the lesson another way. I used to think

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relations existed to make me happy. I would get in one. But as soon as I wasn't happy, I'd leave them.

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I'd enter and exit, enter and exit relationships all the while wondering why I couldn't find a

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relationship that made me happy. And I learned far too late in life that relationships exist for me

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to make the other person happy. And with this understanding, the relationship gives me far more

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happiness than I could have ever imagined. And I realized that happiness was there all the time in

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great abundance. And like Dorothy, I had the power all along. Now, most would think this is where the

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story ending. And he finally figured it out. He learned how to love and happiness found him as he

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found it. Again, different movie. Fast forward 29 years. I was going through one of those periods

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where the movie projectionist in your head keeps replaying scenes from your past and pointing out

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how incredibly stupid and insensitive you were. And sometimes you get stuck in a loop and the little

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man in your head keeps hitting you over the head with his pointer telling you what a loser you are

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and how you should feel bad for making other people feel bad. So I looked her up on Facebook and

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don't tell me you've never done this. Facebook is a way you can quietly peek in on someone's life

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to see how they're doing. And I wanted to see how she was doing. And I wanted to apologize for how

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stupid and insensitive I was way back when I wanted to say I was sorry. And in the movie in my

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head, she'd say that it was okay. She'd tell me that she forgave me long ago that she moved on. She'd

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say that she hasn't thought about me in years and that she's in a really good place. That's the way

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my movie preview was playing in my head. I eventually found her and sent her a simple hello

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greeting and I waited. There was no reply. And that certainly wasn't like the person I knew 29 years

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ago. A couple of months went by and I sent a couple hello messages and still no reply. So I did a

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little online detective work. She had moved to a community north of Minneapolis and I did some more

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searching and found something in a church bulletin about praying for her. And there was a notice about

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her brother and probate court getting some of her stuff. And I found little pieces here and there and

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the picture filled in. She had died of cancer. She must have been in her late 50s. And I hope she

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hadn't died alone. I hope there were people around her. I wished I could have visited her one last

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time to have held her hand and say I was sorry. I would have wanted that. And for some reason, again, I

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cry. So what's the really big lesson here? The one where I tie it all together, where I point the

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parallels existing between reading instruction teaching in life. And I don't think I have one, but I'll

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say this. The world doesn't exist to make us happy. If we go around looking for people and things and

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achievements or conditions to make us happy, we'll never find it. We might placate ourselves for a bit,

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but we'll never find happiness. Happiness will always be just beyond our reach. We exist to make others

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happy. And in doing so, we have an abundance of happiness all around us. And love isn't something

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you feel. It's something you do. It's a verb. And love isn't confined to a single person or family. Love

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isn't transactional. You don't love somebody because somebody does something. And you don't stop loving

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because somebody does something or doesn't do something you love. That's it. No expectations. That's

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the lesson. I wish my literacy professor had given me 40 years ago. This is a literacy professor, Dr.

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Andy Johnson, and this has been the Reading Instruction Show.