The Last Lecture

The Last Lecture
Jai and I work hard at our marriage. We’ve gotten so much better at
communicating, at sensing each other’s needs and strengths, and at
finding more things to love about each other. So it saddens us that we
won’t get to experience this richness in our marriage for the next thirty
or forty years. We won’t get to amortize the hard efforts we’ve put in so
far. Still, we wouldn’t trade our eight years of marriage for anything.
I know that so far, I’ve been handling my diagnosis pretty well. Jai
has, too. As she says: “No one needs to cry for me.” She means it. But we
want to be honest, too. Though counseling has helped tremendously,
we’ve had some tough times. We’ve cried together in bed, fallen back
asleep, woken up and cried some more. We’ve gotten through in part by
focusing on the tasks at hand. We can’t fall to pieces. We’ve got to get
some sleep, because one of us has to get up in the morning and give the
kids breakfast. That person, for the record, is almost always Jai.
I recently celebrated my forty-seventh birthday, and Jai had to
wrestle with the question: “What do you get the man you love for his last
birthday?” She opted for a watch and a big-screen TV. Though I’m not a
fan of TV—it’s mankind’s greatest time-waster—the gift was completely
appropriate, since I’ll be in bed so much at the end. TV will be one of my
last links to the outside world.
There are days when Jai tells me things and there’s little I can say
in response. She has told me: “I can’t imagine rolling over in bed and
you’re not there.” And: “I can’t picture myself taking the kids on
vacation and you not being with us.” And: “Randy, you’re always the
planner. Who’s going to make the plans?”
I’m not worried. Jai will make the plans just fine.
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