Why You Don't Appreciate What You've Got Till It's Gone

And What You Can Do About It

One sunny day long ago, I was walking without direction on Grand Ave in Saint Paul by the bars and the crowds looking off into the distance, ruminating on the shit of the world, the swindles and the rudeness of people, when a little old lady at a bus stop pulled me back to the here and now and said to me, “There you are. I’ve been waiting for you. Take this. Wear it around your neck. Do this and it will save you. Don’t do it and well, you will see.” She gave me a key on a string. The bus pulled up, she grabbed her bags, got on and left me there to wonder what just happened.

Well, I did wear that key around my neck for a long time: many, many months, perhaps a couple of years even, and nothing happened. And eventually I forgot about it and put it in a box and there it lived many more years. Well, I had been living comfortably for a while. Biking the streets of Saint Paul, hiking the trails along the Mississippi, going to happy hour with my friends at Morissey’s–the vintage Irish Pub, riding on a cycle of high and sad about dating concerns and money, as we do, picnicking at music in the park–normal things.

Then as life tends to do, my fortune changed. I burned out. I had pushed and pushed so many people to change, telling them to lighten up, take it easy, breathe, live freely all the while I pushed this message with an aggressive grind. My mother had gotten a forceful dose of this rhetoric, year after year. And then one day, I got the news: she had stomach cancer.

She had never minded the GMO foods. I had always told her, “Mom, that stuff will give you cancer.” Now, I couldn’t help wondering if it was the food or me. Either way, I left the city to go be with her during her illness. I packed it all up and moved home to the country.

When I was unpacking, I found that key on the necklace. I don’t know why, but it felt like I should wear it again. So I put it on. I wore it every day I went to see my mom. I started trying to fit it in locks as I passed them by. Not any lock, but a lock that seemed like maybe it led somewhere I was supposed to go.

One day, I was trying this key on an old iron gate garlanded with ivy (very enchanted looking) that I had specifically crossed the street to go see. On the other side, the courtyard looked like a secret garden. As I was standing there, rattling around and peering in, an old man came up to the gate from the other side and said, “You’re here.” Now I was worried because I thought perhaps he was expecting someone and he mistook me because I had tried to open the gate. I said, “I think you’re mistaken.” And he said, “No, no, come in.”

This man was a Tai Chi teacher and this garden was a space where he held practices. There were a few other people there. And before I knew it, I was practicing with them next to a fish pond. Next day, I brought my mother (after some cajoling) and for her, the practice, as well as the old man talking about the wisdom of fluidity, it was like a dam broke in her.

She cried and cried. I tried to remove her, but the old man said, “No, no, she is experiencing water. It is the natural way.” To my amazement, the others in the class gathered around her. And hugged her in a huddle. And I, her child, was the spectator standing apart.

After this, she was going every day. I was delighted. She’d never really taken to any of my suggestions before. But something else happened. She stopped taking her treatments.

We fought about this. I was angry with her. She was just giving up. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye. She started telling me all the time that anyone not becoming more fluid was crystallizing like Han Solo in Carbonite with a scream congealed on their face. I went to the Tai Chi man and pleaded with him to convince her that perhaps there was a purpose to keep fighting. “She has found another purpose,” he said. I stormed out furious.

At the very, very end, I lost the will to anger and I just became sad. And as I knew this was it, I wanted to make sure I spent those fleeting moments in being with her, not in resisting. I felt so powerless.

One of the last things she said to me in life was “I know you think you’ve killed me. I know you carry guilt because of all the times you said that this would happen. And I know you think by bringing me to Terry (the old Tai chi man), you think you’ve killed me again because I gave up. But I want you to know I found it. I really found it. I found life in a way I’ve never known, and you led me to it. I’m leaving happy and that’s all anyone can hope for.” A couple of weeks later, she was gone.

At her funeral. I held that key in my hands, pondering what my mother had said and that old lady at the bus stop.

While I was in the middle of cleaning out my mom’s house, I went to the city to see some friends and get drunk and get away from grief for a night or two.

It dawned on me that I was to give that key to the next person now. And so one of the nights of my visit, I was leaving a show at First Avenue with some friends. We were waiting for our Uber on the sidewalk, when I noticed a young woman sitting on the curb, nearby us, smoking and wiping away tears. I took the key from my neck and walked over to her.

I said, “I’ve been expecting you. Take this. Wear it around your neck. One day, it’ll save you. And if you don’t, well, you’ll see.” Baffled, she took the key as our car pulled up and I climbed in. As we pulled away, I watched her turning it over in her hands.