[2024-04-29] Precious and precarious
In 1995, 23-year-old reporter Jeff Pearlman was assigned to write an article about a couple who had been married for 23 years. Wife Lynn Thompson was dying of cancer and wanted to teach her husband, Warren Thompson, how to care for her garden, her "pride and joy."
As the article explains, Lynn had had ovarian cancer about five years earlier. Some four years later, lung cancer had metastasized to her brain, bloodstream and entire body.
Lynn died in 1995, a month after Pearlman wrote his piece. Warren lived almost 30 years more, passing away in March 2024.
In fact, it was Warren's recent death that prompted Pearlman to tweet about the story he had written on the Thompsons almost three decades earlier. He wrote:
Going to their house, sitting with Lynn and Warren, was one of the greatest lessons I've ever received. On compassion. On empathy. That story has stuck with me for decades (my dad referenced it in his speech at my wedding), and was a vital early lesson on being still and allowing people to talk.
Pearlman added that he and Warren had kept in touch through the decades and that he loved receiving Warren's Christmas cards, which always included photos of the Thompson children and grandchildren. "In the end," Pearlman says, "family would be Warren's greatest garden."
Pearlman's 1995 article is both sad and heartwarming. He wrote:
Lynn, frail and fatigued by the cancer, is having her bad days. The disease has taken away much of her hearing. She used to walk four miles every morning. Now a steep hill is tough enough.
Put her in front of the garden, though, and it's as if the disease has seeped out of her body. Her eyes, at times buried beneath sagging brows, dance and glow. Her hearing mysteriously perks up. "What did you say about my lilies?"
For Warren's part, noted Pearlman,
He recognizes the inevitable, knows he will soon be a widower, but refuses to let 1800 Woodmont become a house of tears or a house without flowers.
There are so many lessons to take away from this story and Pearlman's response to it: the value of having a diversion to keep one's thoughts focused on the here and now rather than on what lies ahead, the importance of legacy, and the reward of "being still and allowing people to talk."
More importantly, stories like this (especially ones that reference ovarian cancer) remind me that life is precious and precarious. Every day I get to be part of the lives of my loved ones is priceless.
