Struggling To Overcome Her Grief And Recognising Connectivity
Paula Hightower and her tenure at Radio City Music Hall
Paula Hightower found herself spontaneously crying, the tears running down each cheek and as she tried to fight it, her heart still ached beyond her capacity to bear it. A year had passed since her husband died from cancer and it still seemed like yesterday. The images were vivid; the memories were just as intense as her present consciousness. She had built around herself a fortress of routine and repetition to give her life predictability. But no pattern she created made sense to the loss. Had she been religious, she could have found some comfort in the hope of resurrection, of a joyful reunion in some other world. But the only solace that gave her comfort was the memory of the joy they had shared. She relished those moments. The cancer had obliterated a life she had grown to love. Grief — she often told herself — was the cost of love. Everything in life was sadly temporary.
When she arrived at Radio City Music Hall, she wiped her eyes with a white silk handkerchief, and she feigned a slight smile upon entering the business offices.
“Good Morning, Paula,” another young woman greeted.
“Good Morning, Virginia,” she responded in kind.
“Did you finish those papers for the concert tonight?” Virginia asked.
Paula reached into her bag and removed a stack of papers, which she then handed to Virginia.
“I left a couple of messages on your desk,” Virginia told her.
She entered and set her bag down. She sat awkwardly on her chair. Removing a bottle of orange juice as she had done so many times before, she sighed for a moment. Her days away from the office were always busy. For the eight hours she labored, she found respite from thoughts of her husband. After taking a couple of sips from her juice, she lifted the messages Virginia had left for her; one of from the Mayor’s office, the other from the Spellman school about an upcoming youth concert for disabled children. She was contemplating which call she should return first, when a young man named Alex Corbin entered the office and interrupted her.
“I see you’re a little early, Paula,” he told her.
“Yea, a few minutes.”
“A few minutes could change history.” He stood quietly for a moment. “We could catch a movie or a dinner?”
“I can’t go out with you,” she responded. “I can’t go out with anyone.”
“It’s still too soon after your husband died?” he asked.
“His name was David. “She paused. “You don’t want to go out with me. I can start crying any time. Like this morning on the train. I’d be no company for anyone.”
“I’m sorry about your husband,” he consoled.
“It’s not about you, Alex. You seem very nice. But I can’t live just on the surface anymore. I hope one day you’ll love someone so profoundly that you can’t imagine a life without them. My sister lost a baby. That’s something even I couldn’t bear.” She paused. “I know it’s probably too much to say. But thank you.”
He awkwardly walked away.
She sat there for a moment and realized that this was what she had been doing for months, pushing away anyone who tried to move closer to her. But she didn’t know what else she could do. Her grief was inconsolable.
She lifted the message for the Spellman School and dialled the phone number.
“Spellman school,” a young woman answered.
“Yes, this is Paula Hightower with Radio City Music Hall. I’m calling for Mrs. Baker.”
“I’ll transfer you.”
The phone rang a minute and another woman answered, “Yes this is Mrs. Baker. May I help you?”
“Hello, Mrs. Baker. This is Paula Hightower at Radio City Music Hall. They told me you called me.”
“Yes. We have a group of about fifty children from the school who are coming to a special concert, and we wanted to know if you could arrange a short tour for about ten of the most functional students.”
“I’ll see what I can do. But you know we’re going to have our hands full that day.”
She remembered the last concert with hundreds of children to direct and how hectic things were.
“I’ll ask around and see what I can arrange,” Paula answered.
“That’s great,” Mrs. Baker answered.
“Give me about a week and I’ll call you back. “
Her duties included arranging concerts, organizing tours and overseeing a staff of over a hundred ushers and other support staff.
“Goodbye, Mrs. Baker.” She hung up the phone. She was grateful that she had so much to do.
Paula Hightower was sitting at her desk analyzing a stack of program schedules when Angela approached her desk.
“How are you feeling, Paula,” she asked. “You look a little tired.”
“I haven’t been sleeping well. But I’m OK,” Paula answered.
“I was wondering if you want to interview this caterer for the Bridgeford event.”
“Go ahead, Angela. You do it!”
Angela hesitated a moment. “There’s one other thing,” she began. “I sort of added you as a guest for a party I’ve been invited to after work. It’s a chance for you to meet some new people, and expand your borders. Please don’t turn me down again.”
Paula sighed for a moment. “Alright, I’ll go. But I’m not up to meeting a bunch of people.”
“Everyone just wants you to get out and enjoy yourself again.”
“I want to tell you something,” Paula acknowledged. “Please sit down a few minutes.”
Her friend sat down.
“This happened before David was in my life.” She shrugged. “Where to begin? My mother was still alive, and we both had gone out to dinner together at this Italian restaurant near Penn Station. She looked very nice in a dress, and I was there in pants and a nice cotton blouse and for some odd reason, she began to talk to me for the first time about how she had met my father. It was at a birthday party for one of the many children he had delivered. My mother came along as a guest with her friend, Allison Minever. There’s an interesting story about Allison I could tell. She’s known me since I was a baby. My mother wasn’t there to meet anybody. She had only come along for the ride. She met my father just as she was about to leave, and they started talking and couldn’t stop talking. She used to tell me she knew she was going to spend a lifetime with my father the moment she met him.”
“My little invitation,” Angela interrupted, “prompted this memory?”
“I’ve been thinking a lot about my life. Death has a way of making you think.’ She paused. “I just can’t imagine another life for me.”
“I don’t mean to intrude,” Angela proposed, “but there are good grief counsellors. My friend Maggie went to one after her husband died.”
“There is nothing anyone can tell me that will help me at this point. I just must get through this. But I’ll go out with you tonight.”
After Angela left her, Paula spent the remainder of the morning working on her schedules and she finally clocked out for lunch at about 12:30. She was grateful that some were concerned about her. But she knew she had to deal with her grief in her private way and she was determined to build a life without David, a life that had meaning and direction and would lead to genuine joy again, though at this moment such a life seemed almost impossible.
As she left the building to find something to eat, she remembered she had a letter to mail and decided to stop by a post office to drop it off. When she entered the building a few blocks from her work, she found a place in line behind a dozen others. Four people ahead of her in the same line stood Frank Glen with his letters to news magazines in his left hand. He waited several minutes until he finally reached the mail clerk and then laid ten letters down on the counter. One by one the postal clerk weighed them and dropped them in a box and Paula watched their whole interchange as Frank paid for the stamps and the clerk handed Frank his receipt. As he walked past the crowd of people waiting in line, he brushed into her, even looking into Paula’s eyes as he passed. By the time she reached the clerk and bought her stamps, Frank was gone.
Paula Hightower hadn’t been out to a dinner party since her husband had died and she only begrudgingly agreed to go out with her friend Angela. The thought of getting dressed up and preparing herself to meet new people terrified her. But she knew she had to break free from the cycle of grief which haunted her every night and this was but a small first step.
When Angela arrived outside her apartment that evening, she came downstairs in a black evening dress she had worn but once. Angela opened the door of her BMW sedan to let her inside.
“So where are we going?” she asked her friend.
“We’re going to Long Island to a house in Glen Cove and an old college friend of mine named Roberta.”
“What does she do?” Paula asked.
“What she does is not as important as what her husband does. He’s a biophysicist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.”
“I’m surprised at your answer, Angela. What does she do?”
“She has three children and is a stay-at-home mom,” Angela answered.
“That’s wonderful,” Paula responded, “to be able to stay home with your children when they are young.” She paused. “I hope you’re not trying to set me up with some unmarried friend.”
“Don’t be so suspicious.” Angela told her, “But things can happen again.”
“Are there going to be single men at this party?”
“A few,” Angela answered.
“I’m not on an outing to find a new husband,” she asserted.
“No one wants you to jump into a new marriage. But we don’t want to see you squander the rest of your life.”
She turned on the engine and pulled out from the curb.
The trip to Glen Cove took nearly an hour and during the course of the trip, Paula spoke of many small details of what happened during the day at work and she spoke a little about David. They focused a few minutes on some of the odd coincidences which led her to that moment when she knocked him down on the subway platform.
“I remember,” she told her friend, “That I had forgotten my chequebook and I had to go back to my apartment to find it. It made me ten minutes late and that’s what caused us to meet.”
“I hear these stories all the time,” Angela responded. “But I’ve never had anything like that happen to me. No running into old acquaintances in odd places. My life has been predictable and uncomplicated.”
It was nearly eight o’clock when they arrived at the house in Glen Cove and Paula counted five cars in the driveway and two parked on the street in front of the house, which was a large colonial house with a semicircle driveway in front of the carved wooden double door entranceway.
Angela parked the car across the street and Paula climbed out on the right side, struggling a moment in her heels which she had worn for the first time in months. When they rang the front doorbell, Roberta opened the door to let them inside, she hugged her friend and then Angela introduced Paula to her friend.
“This is my best friend, Paula,” Angela told Roberta.
“Nice to meet you,” Paula responded.
Inside Paula could see into the dining room where a long table was set with ten chairs, and she could hear the sound of children’s laughter from what appeared to be a playroom at the rear of the house.
“I can hear your children,” Paula told her.
“Yes, I have three, I’ll introduce you later, two sons and a daughter. There’s Patricia the oldest, then Logan, then Parker, eleven, eight, and four years old.”
In the parlour, they could see five men and three women conversing with each other in two small groups. In one was Roberta’s husband Timothy, a woman and two men, in the other was an older man and two women who were quietly listening to him. Another man about thirty-six stood quietly apart from them. Roberta introduced Paula and Angela to all of them. “This is my husband, Timothy, and his friend Peter and Peter’s fiancée Rebecca. This is Angela and Paula.” She walked them over to the other group to introduce them.
“This is Dr. Eisenstein who works with Timothy at the laboratory and Edward Farrell and his sister Melody and her friend April.”
“Nice to meet all of you,” Paula acknowledged.
She felt uncomfortable and after a glance around the room, she immediately suspected that Edward Farrell was her designated companion for the evening, especially since he was the only person who was introduced with his full name.
“What do you do?” Edward asked her. “I mean for a living.”
“I work for the Radio City Music Hall,” she answered.
“I’m a biophysicist,” he answered. “I work at the laboratory with Dr. Eisenstein.”
She began to analyze the logic of her friend’s choice for her and she really didn’t feel comfortable in making small talk with him. She didn’t feel comfortable making small talk with anyone anymore.
Paula excused herself a moment. “I must use the restroom. I’ll be back shortly,” and her friend Angela followed her.
“I’m not comfortable with this idea. I don’t want to talk to strangers,” Paula said.
“Everyone is a stranger until you get to know them,” Angela answered. “He seems very nice.”
“He could be an angel. I’m not ready.” Paula paused. “And I have to go to the bathroom.”
“I’ll show you where it is,” Angela told her.
As Paula went inside the restroom, Angela spoke to her through the door.
“I’m not asking you marry the man just talk to him for a few minutes. You talk to people all the time at work.”
“I talk to people because I have to talk to do my job. I’ve never been comfortable talking about trivialities.”
“Then don’t talk to him about trivialities. Talk about the meaning of your existence.”
“I don’t want to talk to him about how my husband died,” she responded.
Paula left the bathroom and rejoined her friend.
“Alright, I’ll engage in cordial conversation. But I’m not ready for anything else,” Paula acknowledged.
“That’s all any of us are asking. I just want you to consider the possibility you could be with someone else.”
Then both returned to the parlor where they could hear laughter.
“Roberta is telling her novel theories about childrearing,” Rebecca told them. “She thinks it’s possible to raise super children, with abilities that could be an evolutionary leap.”
“I do,” Roberta answered. ‘Timothy is working on genetic research at the laboratory and he thinks we’re on the threshold of creating children with abilities we can’t even imagine.”
“We’re just beginning to understand the role of neurotransmitters,” Timothy explained. “I don’t want to be too technical, but we’ve made tremendous breakthroughs. We’re on the threshold of revolutionary breakthroughs in our understanding of how the brain works.”
“Paula’s undergraduate degree was in biology,” Angela volunteered.
“Yes, I studied Biology at Fordham,” she responded. “But that’s over ten years ago.”
“And what do you do now?” Timothy asked her.
“I work at the Radio City Music Hall,” Paula answered.
“She’s a manager at the Hall,” Angela volunteered.
“And you enjoy this?” Timothy asked.
“I love my job. It is music and dance and laughter, all the things you would say raise dopamine levels,” she responded.
“And if you don’t mind answering, what made you decide to leave Biology?” Timothy asked.
Angela held her hand for a moment.
“I don’t mind answering it. I left biology because I didn’t think it was human anymore. Your wife was talking about super children. If we lived in a utopia it would be wonderful. But if you were able to create such children, the government or others would be using these children for their own agenda and not seeing these children as ends in themselves.”
Paula bit her lip, because there were other things she wanted to say, but she knew she had already said too much.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound this way. Please forgive me,” she apologized.
“It’s OK,” Roberta responded. “Everyone here knows what you’ve been through. So, feel perfectly comfortable to say whatever you think.”
Angela and Paula returned to speak to Dr. Eisenstein.
“We’re back,” Angela greeted.
“Edward was telling us about quantum theory,” Dr. Eisenstein explained. “He had just mentioned the novel theories of David Bohm.”
“Yeah, I’ve read his book ‘Wholeness and the Implicate Order’ a few times. I’m not sure I agree with him. He thinks everything is connected at an implicate level,” Dr. Eisenstein observed.
“Things are connected,” Paula responded, “I can demonstrate this to you.”
“How is that?” Angela asked.
“It’s a little parlor game that David taught me.”
“What did David do?” Roberta asked her.
“David was a pianist, he played at the Met.”
“It must have been beautiful,” Roberta answered.
“I have his music. I could never part with that,” Paula spoke softly. Tears began to well in her eyes.
“So how do we play this parlour game?” Roberta asked her.
“It’s complicated. So, let’s eat first and I’ll show you.”
They talked for about fifteen minutes more, mostly about art and politics and Paula said very little to anyone. Then Roberta took them all to the dining room to sit down. At the end of the table, Roberta and Timothy sat down and Dr. Eisenstein to Timothy’s left and Peter and Rebecca to his right. Paula and Angela sat down next to each other, and Edward sat next to Paula and Melody and April sat across from them.
Roberta brought out her children for a moment to introduce them. They all had curly blond hair like their mother. Patricia was polite and soft-spoken and Paula asked her a question, “Do you play music?”
“I play piano and recorder,” she responded.
“I can get you a free ticket to a concert,” Paula proposed.
“That would be great,” Patricia answered.
The two boys were remarkably intelligent speaking with erudition well beyond their ages. Everyone could see that Roberta was accomplishing her goal to develop her children intellectually. Then Roberta sent the children back to their babysitter and prepared to serve the meal.
On the menu was a Russian dish, chicken Kyiv and a special potato salad and collard greens. Everything was delectable. For most of the meal, the conversation was sporadic, mostly about work at the laboratory. Then at one point, Timothy got up to make a toast.
“The occasion for this meal is Dr. Eisenstein getting approval for his grant this week on his continuing research on neurotransmitters. Let’s all drink a small toast to my esteemed colleague.”
They all rose and made a small toast to Dr. Eisenstein.
“I’d also like to toast the breakthrough we made this week in understanding neurotransmitters. I think we are on the threshold of a major increase in intelligence and in nerve cell regeneration.”
Paula, sitting next to Edward, looked nervous and spoke very little to him during the meal. After they had all eaten a small slice of apple pie, Roberta stood up and proposed, “Our special guest Paula has graciously volunteered to teach us a parlour game about connections. I hope we will all be able to participate.”
Paula appeared nervous. “I must apologize beforehand. I saw my husband do this several times, but this is the first time I’ve done this. I can’t promise this is going to work out, but it can be interesting. We just need some paper and pencils.”
Roberta left the room for a few minutes and then returned with paper and pencils for everyone.
“So, what’s the object of this game?” Dr. Eisenstein asked.
“The object is to see if any of us have connections to each other, barring the obvious connections that we may work together, be friends of one another, are married, etcetera. David used to call it an exploration of the interconnectedness of the space time continuum.”
“So how do we begin?” Timothy asked her.
“We begin by writing down our names at the top of the paper.”
Everyone did so.
“Then we write down our favourite colour, our favourite food, our favourite movie. Then we write down the last odd coincidence we had,” Paula explained.
Everyone set about writing things down on their papers. When Paula saw that everyone was finished, she took a deep breath and continued.
“Now here comes the interesting part. The one that every time I saw David do it truly amazed me. I want you to write down someone in your life who had the same birthday as yours. In my own case I’ve had two friends that had the same birthday. If you haven’t had anyone, don’t worry. I have another question for those.”
Not everyone could answer that question though six of the ten wrote something down.
“For the other four, I have different questions. Write down your grandmother on your father’s side first name.”
They all wrote their names down.
“Now comes the revelation. Let’s see what we discover.”
She got up and gathered all the papers together and sat down a moment at her seat to look at them. Everyone was trying to figure out from her facial expressions if it meant anything. Then she turned the papers over face down and spoke, “It was a lot easier when my husband was doing this.”
“Well to begin with, six of the ten wrote down red as your favorite color. Two blues and two blacks. Two sets of two and two sets of three. Coincidences were also interesting. Six of ten had coincidences, Three of the six involved running into an old friend at an unusual place. None of the movies matched. The last question is the most interesting. Out of four paternal grandmothers, three had the same name, though Mary is a common name.” She paused. “The fact that we’re all sitting in this room having a meal shows we’re connected. But even more so, there are things we don’t even realize we have in common. Like for example, my maiden name is Farrell, so we share a common ancestor. We must do a genealogical study to figure that one out.”
“That’s an odd coincidence,” Edward Farrell said.
Then she said, “David used to say ‘Nothing in life is a coincidence.’” Then she stopped for a moment.
“There’s one other thing I want to say about this. Three of you said you ran into old friends recently. This I think is the most common type of connection. We all have heard that phrase, ‘There but for the grace of God go I.’ Whether we want to call it the grace of God, coincidence, or synchronicity, many of us have had these moments which have changed everything, which even change who we are. I’ve promised myself that I’m going to pay attention to these things and if a moment like the moment I had with David on the subway platform comes again, I’m going to seize that moment. I’m no longer only going to live on the surface and be tossed like a small boat on an ocean.”
“Wow, that’s beautiful!” Angela responded.
