Good News Is Gospill

Reason, season, lifetime. We say people come into our lives in those three ways. Usually, they leave the same way. 

But sometimes that connection changes—for a reason, season, life.

Take Larry for instance. Within just a few months of meeting him, he became my reason for leaving a decade-long partnership. 

I needed to go. I just didn’t know how. Larry became the fulcrum, the “reason.” 16 years my senior, he was a talented graphic designer and photographer. We worked pretty well together. And he was totally smitten with me.

That was really all I needed to launch me out of one relationship—and into the next. 

Which lasted just 5 months. And most of those were tumultuous, to say the least. We were not a match made in heaven. His daughter who was living with us—boyfriend in tow—saw her dad treat me in many of the same ways he treated her mother. She saw his flaws more clearly; realizing what her mother might have endured when she was younger.

“I love my dad,” she told me two weeks after our breakup, “but I really like you — and he was wrong; he treated you terribly. Can we still be friends?” 

And that’s how my relationship with Larry became one for a lifetime. Stephanie became one of my best friends; less potential future stepdaughter and more dear sister. We pretty much had babies together and even though she’s 13 years younger than me, I learned a lot about motherhood from her. 

Through growing families, moves, divorces, remarriage, illnesses, Steph and I have managed to stay in touch and spend time together, no matter where in the country we lived—sometimes thanks to her dad who would occasionally send me a plane ticket to come visit. Larry and I developed a pretty decent friendship over these past 35 years. He liked Jay, my husband, and often said that his job was to prepare women for a better man after him. 

We celebrated kids’ birthdays together, and graduations, weddings and great-grandbaby showers. My son and I became so much a part of the family that we were the surprise guests at his 70th birthday in Disneyland.

(I don’t have a picture of him smiling broadly—or being terribly excited about our appearance. The whole scheme was orchestrated by Stephanie. She and I were thrilled!)

Larry had modest successes as a graphic designer and marketing wonk. He had very creative and cool ideas; he just had a hard time sticking to them. Which made me crazy in terms of working with him. And while he kept wanting to do projects with me long after our split, I knew none of them would ever come to fruition—especially as he got older.

And older.

In the past five years, he repeated himself ad nauseam about his expertise in skin cancer awareness. A decade ago, he was quoted in the Wall Street Journal, and he was still riding on that high. But he never capitalized on it. He was afraid, like always, to follow through. Now, age and a complete lack of awareness of how marketing and communications work today sort of froze him in time, talking about the same old ideas and slowly boring everybody into silence..

What could we say? 

Seriously. In my case, I just stopped. It was approximately the 200th time he’d told me I didn’t know anything about computers or graphic design. Time and again, for 35 years, I’d often just capitulated — he was so adamant. But this time I paused and felt the sheer absurdity wash over me: I had spent the last 20 years — the same 20 years he’d been out of the business — knee-deep in the marketing communications and content development business. I told him I once even managed 12 designers and signed contracts for all the software and hardware they used.

He hung up on me. 

That was the last time we spoke. It reminded me an awful lot of the torturous few months we lived together so long ago. I tried to give him grace, considering his advanced age. But I was finally done. I texted him that the only reason I had ever stayed in touch with him was because I loved his daughter like a sister. But I didn’t have to deal with him anymore. I never responded to another text or call from him.

Larry died a few months later, tucked in bed for a nice long sleep. He was 85. 

Never would I ever have expected my relationship with Larry to become one for a lifetime. Literally. May he rest now in eternal peace — the kind of tranquility he never really found in life.