The Five People You Meet in Heaven

My husband and I were sitting in an airport bar, waiting for a plane, when we started discussing "The Five People You Meet in Heaven," the bestseller by Mitch Albom. Neither of us had read the book, but we were fascinated by the concept. We started talking about who the five most influential people in our lives were.

His list was pretty straightforward: his dad, his favorite aunt, his best friend, his ex-wife, and an old boss. My list was a little more esoteric, but I included my graduate school boyfriend. He was the first person whom I dated who was smarter than me. Nobody -- teachers, bosses, mentors -- has ever challenged me intellectually the way he did. He was a master at the Socratic method, and could tie me in knots if I wasn't careful. He didn't want a patsy -- he would get mad if I backed down and told him "You're right. You win." He wanted to earn his victories, and pushed me to argue logically, consistently, passionately, and persuasively. The highest compliment he ever paid me was, "Good comeback."

When graduate school boyfriend moved to the big city -- he was ahead of me in the program -- we kept up a long distance relationship of sorts. We were not exclusive, but agreed to a "don't ask, don't tell" policy when we were together. Most of the time it worked, though the summer I took an internship in the big city, it was clear that we had different definitions of what constituted "together." After graduation, I moved to the big city with his encouragement. We kept up a pretense of exclusivity, but had both gotten in the habit of seeing other people. The parameters of our "don't ask, don't tell" policy were the source of some spectacular knock-down, drag-out fights. I got tired of fighting, and told him it had to be all or nothing. He chose nothing.

About six months went by before he called. He was changing jobs, and taking six weeks off to travel to Australia, New Zealand, and the South Pacific. He told me that he didn't want to leave without settling things between us. He asked me to pick him up when he got back so we could have a big discussion about the future -- our future. Our time apart made him realize he wanted to marry me, and asked me to think about it while he was gone. Wow. Some going away present...

While I was away, I thought about his parting words. Had they come a few months earlier, I would have said yes without hesitation. I had never met anyone like this man before -- in many ways, he was Henry Huggins to my Eliza Doolittle. He, more than anyone, showed me how to exist in polite society. Though I missed him desperately at first, I came to realize that I could make my way in the world without him. There were plenty of smart men in the big city -- men who didn't know me before, who didn't automatically assume that I was clueless, who didn't feel the need to make every conversation a graduate seminar for my benefit, who were not threatened by my newfound social graces. I liked the woman I was becoming -- and though I owed my boyfriend a huge debt of gratitude for pointing the way, I did not owe him my life.

I was late to pick him up -- traffic was bad and his flight got in early. He was ready to jump in the taxi line when I pulled up to the curb. On the ride back to his house, he talked non-stop about his vacation, about the people he met, about taking a train across Australia, about bungee jumping in New Zealand, about the beaches in Bali. I let him go on, because I had nothing to say.

When we got to his house, he asked me to come in. I told him I didn't think it would be a good idea. "What about all the things we have to talk about?"

"We really don't have anything to talk about," I said. "My answer will be no."

"But..."

"No," I said. "If I marry you, I will always be in your shadow. You never stopped seeing me as that unformed, timid graduate student. I can't live like that."

"But..."

"No."

"I never thought I could ever do anything so bad that it would make you stop loving me," was the last thing he said as I drove away. In that moment, I knew with crystal clarity that I'd made the right decision. He still didn't get it: it wasn't about him, it was about me.

When I told my husband this story, he shook his head in disbelief. "You just drove away?"

"Yeah," I said, "Once I made my decision, I never looked back. Not once."

I'm not sure what the moral of this story is, or what parallels it has to my life now. But it makes me feel better to remember that moment when I realized that I could take care of myself.


The Wife Who Knows