“Dear Hope Nation”
I first wrote those words three-and-a-half years ago, March 17, 2020, the beginning of the Pandemic (or pandemic or, if you must, hoax). That began a series of more than a hundred daily letters to the members and staff of Hope for New Hampshire Recovery, where I was executive director.
Observant readers will note the use of the past tense in that last sentence. Let me not bury the lead any further. I have resigned as director of Hope effective right away. Before rumors begin, I have not turpituded financially, sexually, behaviorally or any other way. Likewise, I have no policy or personnel disagreements with Hope’s board of directors. They are all fine people, as are the staff members and the membership of Hope. Hope is my vision of what a recovery center should be: a community of folks bonded by a love for each other and a desire to live without chemical assistance.
I have resigned from Hope completely for health reasons, which I’ll go into by and by.
My five-and-a-half years at Hope have been among the most productive, satisfying and meaningful of my life. As a quirky man, a mystical clown, I found a home where my talents were valued and my shortcomings (and they are many) were covered up by the talents of Hope’s leadership team (thank you, Dave, Karla and Missy), along with two board presidents who are shining examples of nonprofit leadership—David Slawsky and Jacob Young. Together, all of us have worked to create a magical airplane that actually flies. And will continue to. Really.
“The future is a big place.”
I’ve used those words for a long time, first with my daughters as a synonym for “We’ll see” or “Maybe later.” Throughout my time at Hope, though, they’ve grown and become more textured, meaning “Let’s finish this potion, then we’ll start working on that spell” or something like that.
About a week ago, I got news that’s made me rethink this saying. Not discard, but rethink. Apparently, my years of excess—drugging, drinking and, in this case, smoking cigarettes—have taken a toll on me. I’m undergoing exploratory surgery this week to determine whether. I’m facing a five-year survival metric or a two-year death likelihood. Either way, the future has gotten a bit shorter.
Oh, yes. Apparently, I have cancer.
And that’s okay. Really. Now I can focus on depth rather than length. Let me explain with an example.
Yesterday I was buying jewelry for one of my daughters. The clerk and I began joking about this and that, until he was telling me about having been homeless as a child and his father’s death by overdose. He thanked me for brightening his day, because it had been a bad one so far. I asked why, and he said a close friend from childhood had informed him their friendship was over. I asked how he felt about this.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I don’t really care,”
“Bullshit,” I said, using the interpersonal skills I’ve perfected over the years. “You care. A lot.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“If you didn’t care, you wouldn’t still be carrying the pain,” I said, “you would have let it go. If you’d been shopping this morning, and a woman at Market Basket grabbed the cart you had your eye on, you’d have had a flash of anger and forgotten all about her by the time you got to the cheese aisle.
“That you’re still carrying your pain five hours later,” I continued, “means it matters.”
He paused for a long time. “That’s a really good analogy,” he said.
We talked a bit more, then, strange in a jewelry store, hugged each other goodbye.
In the car, I cried. Not because of my diagnosis. Not because of the emotional ghosts that diagnosis has stirred up. Not because I saw my future getting smaller.
I cried because of the intense and shimmering beauty of human connection, of two people sharing a moment, sharing an insight into what makes life worth living.
Then I prayed, asking the Big Joker in the Sky to grant me more of this piercing joy as my path winds on. My future has likely become much shorter than I’d intended, but I can make up for that with depth.
After all, as the closing of all those letters read:
“You matter. I matter. We matter.”
And I do.
And you do.
And we do.
Read more from Keith Howard’s Tiny White Box series.
