Everyone’s life is different and everyone has different priorities on what is important in their life and what would or would not make them happy. I have often wondered if human nature is such that we will never be truly happy? Of course you will argue that there are people who are this happy and they will tell you that they have all that they want or ever will need. I think these people have truly found the meaning of life.
Most people find themselves in a position to say, "My life is generally happy, but…” That but infers that there is something missing. The but is usually followed with, if only I could have a house, or new car or find the money to put the kids through college etc." Usually with these people well always have something that comes up for them to want to say that they are not completely happy.
Finally, you have the shattered souls, the people that are going through a personal crisis so devastating that they just can’t seem to get past it and nothing on this earth will ever make up for that which they are wanting the most. Chances are that some of these people are fortunate enough to get past these crises and move on with their lives, however, some never do and are forever wallowing in pain and suffering. Then there is an unfortunate group of people that for what ever reason, call it bad luck, karma, or poor life skills, either way you slice it, there is one crisis after another throughout their lifetime.
I am not writing this piece to pass judgment or even to give my psychological expertise on why these personalities in humans even exist. What I will do is offer you a story of two women each going through their own personal crisis and working side by side in an office oblivious to the festive mood around them.
The very first job I had was in a factory, I was 17 years old and I had to sit on an assembly line sticking pieces of cylinders together and I hated it. I was looking for other work and found one by word of mouth. A friend of the family had worked in an insurance company before she was married and told me to go and apply. I did and I got the job. I stayed in that insurance company from the time I was 17 until I was 27. My teenage years, and my marriage pretty much took place and ended while I was still at that job.
I held a few positions in the 10-year span that I worked for the company. The last department I worked for was the “Pre-authorized Cheque Department”, which eventually emerged with the Claims Department after a restructuring. Since the restructuring of our little department of two: myself and Gertrude, who was a level above me, we acquired two extra employees and a bigger work load. We had new people to work with and of course new challenges to meet. These challenges ran parallel to the challenges I was facing at home.
By the time I transferred to the Claims Department, I was divorced and this happened to be the first Christmas I would be alone with my son. It wasn’t easy, I was young and my son was only three years old. He was missing a father at Christmas time and I was feeling really bad for both of us.
The Claims Department had people of all ages, Gertrude, the girl I worked with from the Pre-authorized Cheque Department was my age and single and happy to be that way. She was what we called "an old maid" in those days, but she claimed she liked her life just the way it was. She was studying and had no time for boyfriends and the complications a relationship brought when she worked all day and went to school five nights a week. I couldn’t understand her at that point in my life, she was alone and loving it, I was alone and hating it. Nor could she relate to me being lonely either and made comments like,
"Well you were married," and, " being alone is great, you can do whatever you want."
"Hardly," l would answer, "when I have a 3 year old to take care of, I don’t have time for myself."
Then she would show just have much she didn’t understand my feelings by saying, "Well my mother raised three children by herself."
I got the inference she was making loud and clear.
The other people in the office were either young and had boyfriends, or older and happily married. My issues were inconsequential to them. They were happy it was Christmas. The whole office was in a joyful spirit and that was all that seemed to matter.
Then there was Lise. Lise was a young married woman who was trying for three years to have a baby.. We talked about the Christmas season and how the only thing she wanted for Christmas was a baby. She told me if she could get pregnant for Christmas she wouldn’t care if there were presents under the tree or not. There was no present in the world that her husband could give her that would ever be better than a baby.
She also knew that I was depressed spending my first Christmas without a husband or a father present for my young child. I too told her that that I wanted a man for Christmas, actually I had made a joke about it. You see at Christmas, the department always exchanged small gifts and when the girls asked me what would I like just to give them a few ideas, I joked and said, "a man, do you think you can get me that?" They all laughed, they did not realize how much truth was really hidden behind that joke, but Lise knew.
They say be careful of what you wish for, you may just get it. In early December 1980, Lise collapsed at work; she was rushed to the hospital by ambulance. Lise was pregnant and even she didn’t know it. The problem was it was an ectopic pregnancy. Instead of the fertilized egg traveling to the uterus as it should have done, it attached itself to the fallopian tube and was getting too big for the narrow tube. They had to remove the tube. To complicate matters, Lise had only one good ovary, and now that one of the tubes were removed her doctor told her the chances of her conceiving was very slim in deed.
She was devastated; all the joy seemed to leave this woman once she came back to work. She no longer was the same quiet but smiling woman. She did her work without even raising her head. She no longer participated in conversations; however, she did talk to me once or twice after that.
Lise never even had the chance to feel pregnant. She mistook the bleeding she experienced from the egg in the fallopian tube for her period as it occurred at the same time as her normal period. If it wasn’t for the incredible abdominal and pelvic pain she experienced that day at the office she would never have known.
Since she did know she was at risk for an ectopic pregnancy since she only had one good ovary, she thought she would have been better prepared to recognize the signs.
Her fallopian tube was damaged and it had to be removed, but today albeit 30 years later, some women can still get pregnant having only one fallopian tube. Lise was fighting against having only one fallopian tube and one ovary, which was not a good combination for conception.
Today, the drug methotrexate may be used to stop cell growth and dissolve existing cells in the fallopian tube if found early enough through blood tests, nothing like this was available for Lise in the 1970’s. She was just plain unlucky.
I don’t know if Lise was ever successful in having a child, I did leave the insurance company and never stayed in contact. Throughout the years I thought about her and how the only thing I wanted at that time was a man in my life and the only thing she wanted was a baby. Her final remarks she made to me after coming back from the hospital were, " I would give up my husband whom I love with all my heart, if it came to a choice between being married and having my own child. I don’t want some other woman’s egg for my husband’s sperm to fertilize, I don’t want to adopt someone else’s baby, I just want my own child, my own blood, nothing more, nothing less."
I had my baby; but no husband, she had a loving husband but no baby, our situations were reversed yet we did understand each other’s pain.
