Some time after my husband’s death, I emptied a deep top drawer of his desk and found, jammed into the very back, a small spiral notebook apparently long forgotten.   

            Written on the first page was a date in April, five years earlier, followed by the name of the neurologist who had diagnosed Len as having Parkinson’s Disease.

            We had both noticed a slight drag of one of his feet, but just weeks before, he had fallen when snow-shoeing in the Cascades with our son-in-law and turned an ankle, so it was easy to discount his awkward gait. What I did not know at the time was that Len had become aware of a significant change in his handwriting, the letters becoming small and cramped. This symptom was one key to the initial, later confirmed, diagnosis.

            Under the name of the doctor, Len had written:

                   "Make Changes:

                      "Live by the water"

                      "Wilderness fishing"

                      "More joyous times"

            I stopped reading after those last three words, and for a moment was uncertain about turning to the next page. But mere seconds passed before my decision was made. Without further exploration, I tossed the notebook into the large trash bag at my feet, which already held the detritus of the other drawers.

            Over our years together, unless offered, we never read each other's mail. Sporadically, I wrote personal reflections in a journal. I didn't hide it away. Without ever speaking of it, we honored each other's privacy.

            But was his privacy any longer a consideration? Was that really the cause of my decision, or was my hesitance to continue reading born of something else entirely? Might "more joyous times" imply a hidden dissatisfaction with his life, with our marriage?

            Len, usually a man of few casually spoken words, in writing expressed himself clearly and with insight. Each of us would, from time to time, put on paper what was troubling us, and later share either what we'd written, or the concerns that had in this way been crystallized.

            Eventually we talked and talked. Sometimes wept. Always, we came together.

            No longer possible.

            Looking back, I believe this was my thinking as I briefly held the small notebook in my hand:  Whatever secret yearnings Len wrote down on first learning of his diagnosis, might later actually have become part of our conversations, perhaps led to some meaningful shifts in our lives. There were many. Five years had passed since the writing. But perhaps he’d decided not to reveal the private thoughts he then had in mind.

            We owe no one complete disclosure. Control over the measured sharing, the daily dance of enriching a relationship, is ours alone.

            The memory of him I wanted was of how he chose to be known to me.

                                                 . . . . . . .

(Note: Len did indeed spend four of his last five years flying off to go fishing every chance he got.)