The Cracks That Heal
Pepper Scott
“There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.”
Those words are from Leonard Cohen’s song “Anthem.” We watched Cohen sing it in a concert broadcast on TV one night. I like and love many of Cohen’s songs, but for some reason, those particular words stayed with me. Not the rest of the song. Just those.
I think they bothered Terry more than I realized.
As we grew older together, and MS gradually made him less able to care for himself, I knew it weighed on him that the little petite Pepper had ended up taking care of him, and pretty much everything else. He felt even worse knowing that I had given up my dream of becoming Dr. Pepper so I could be home with him more. Our world had become smaller too, with less excitement and more trouble visible somewhere out on the horizon.
He never said all of that in one sitting. Terry was not exactly a man who liked to unload the entire contents of his mind onto the kitchen table. But I could see it accumulating, one thought at a time.
Then came the snowstorm.
During the worst snowstorm of that particular winter, Terry broke his leg trying to move from his wheelchair to the recliner for the night. That was the last major setback that started a new decline in his health.
The surgery went well. The wound healed. But somehow the whole downturn had been put into fast motion.
He came home with some impressive new hardware in his leg. Rods, screws, nuts, bolts, the whole Home Depot collection. It took about a year before he could sit up again.
But Terry did not give up on living.
Not even close.
He continued making plans to get out. He organized group lunches with his buddies. He fussed over little maintenance jobs and big ones around the house. He found things to do because, well, that was Terry.
I could see him trying hard. I admired him for it, and for the positive attitude he kept bringing to a situation that had become increasingly difficult.
But I could also see something changing.
What used to bother him quietly in the back of his mind was now much closer to the surface. I could see it in every movement he made with his body. It was as though his body had started saying out loud what he had once been able to keep to himself.
Then one day, “Anthem” came on the radio while we were driving to an appointment.
Terry sang along.
Then he kept singing long after the song had ended.
I enjoyed that. I thought he must be in a particularly good mood.
Then he looked at me, his eyes lit up, and said, “Honey, that’s it!”
And he sang the words again.
“There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.”
“I am not broken,” he said. “We are not perfect, but we are not broken. We just have a few cracks for the light to get in.”
I did not have words for what I felt in that moment.
I still don’t.
But I knew he had found something important. Maybe the cracks were not the things that ruined us. Maybe they were the places where something new could enter. A little more patience. A little more laughter. A little more love.
Terry had found his way to that thought, and somehow he handed it to me.
That was how he kept us going.
Right to the end.
