167. Stupid Questions

Nora shares a dream that was a visit from her dead husband, Aaron.

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

INTRO MUSIC

I’m Nora McInerny and it’s going to be okay.  This podcast is a group project. We know that a lot of things are not okay, but Monday through Friday we are here. bringing one, not great thing necessarily, but an okay thing so we can start or end our day with the opposite of a doom scroll.  I very rarely dream  of my dead husband, Aaron. 

These dreams are so rare that they feel like visits to me.  Most of the time… In these dreams, I’m just missing him. It’s a crowded party and I see him across the room, but every time I get close enough to tap his shoulder, he slips away and everyone tells me, Oh, he’s so funny. Look how good he looks. Oh, you just missed him. 

But recently I dreamed, dreamt? Can’t be dreamt. Dreamt sounds British. I dreamed that he was sitting at my dining room table with my entire family. Smiling and laughing. I walked in, startled at the sight of him and everyone laughed.  And my husband, current husband Matthew,  said, Surprise!  In the dream, I knew Aaron was dead, but I also knew that he was there.

Present and handsome and healthy looking in his button down and his cardigan.  And I… Touched his face and I just rushed to try to tell him everything how much I love him How much I miss him how much I’m so sad. He missed out on tick tock. He would have killed on that app I woke up at 4:44 in the morning with tears on my face with Matthew laying in bed next to me, and I told Matthew everything I just told you.

I thanked him for that great surprise, I kissed his cheeks. He also slept through all of this, has no recollection, so I had to tell him again over coffee a few hours later.  And then I spent all day after that dream thinking about a girl that I met at a signing for it’s okay to laugh, crying is cool too. This was a brand new book, this story of loving and losing Erin, and I was secretly pregnant with Matthew’s baby. 

When the book was coming out not when Aaron was alive most of the people at the book signing were my age But there was this teenage girl willowy Trembling crying off a full face of makeup and I pulled her into me and said oh, no did your dad die and her mother said no,  she just lost her boyfriend  and I Tried in the few minutes that we had together to just get as much comfort into her as I could.

I told her to forget all the platitudes, let her feel how enormous this loss was, to never let anyone tell her to rush through it or that, you know, it didn’t matter. Don’t worry, you’re young. Like her youth didn’t make that love any less real. She didn’t have to move on, but life would move forward.  And she would move forward with life. 

And the day after I had this dream of Aaron, that girl messaged me. And she is now an adult, who is married, and was reaching out to me  because she was afraid of the same thing that I was afraid of on the day that I met her. That she would have to place these two big loves on a scale and tell the world who she loved best. 

Because people have probably asked her, as they’ve asked me, Well, who do you love more? Who would you choose?  Who would you choose?  There are no smart answers to stupid questions, and there’s no decision to make for a choice that doesn’t exist.  Erin will never appear at my dinner table.  That girl’s high school boyfriend will not show up on her doorstep, drenched from the rain, like in a Taylor Swift song. 

It would feel greedy if it weren’t also so tragic.  To love anyone at all is such a stupid thing and such a gift.  People are such fragile, tender little creatures and such  brutes, where  we are entrusted with others care.  There goes a helicopter speaking of care. 

People are such fragile, tender creatures, and such brutes.  We are entrusted with each other’s care, and man, oh man, do we mess it up sometimes, and man, oh man, do we sometimes do better than anyone thought we could.  We are guaranteed to lose each other, probably in some awful, unexpected way.  We will say and do regrettable things, wear unforgivable outfits in public. 

Ask the stylist to give us a haircut that has never once worked on anyone but Reese Witherspoon. You know the one.  This next week will be, God willing,  totally forgettable in every way.  We’ll blend into the weeks before and after, like watercolors. 

OUTRO MUSIC

CREDITS