Still Dancing Through Life

Gretchen and Norm Helm were married for eight years when Norm was struck by a car while crossing the street and suffered a massive head injury. Everything in their lives changed at this moment. Norm, who was the pastor of a church in Westborough, Ma. had to give up his job and his profession. Gretchen also had to give up her profession as a therapist as they needed to leave the town they had called home for ten years in order for the new minister to establish himself without the former minister and his wife sharing the spotlight. They began a new life in New Mexico but had to deal with the effects of Norm's traumatic brain injury. Norm's short-term memory was gone, and over the years Norm had to endure many other losses. Then, seventeen years after his accident, Norm was diagnosed with dementia and subsequently entered an assisted living facility. While going through some things that Norm had written to Gretchen over the years, she found a lovely note that Norm had written to her on the occasion of their nineteenth wedding anniversary. He wrote, "My dear Gretchen, Nobody has ever been more a part of me and my life than you have been and are; nor have I ever known anybody as well and as deeply as I know you. We are not one: we are a pair...We dance freely, improvising as we spin around this floor of life...So just hold me, and we'll dance another nineteen years. I love you, Norm." Jack Kornfield wrote: " At the end of our life our questions are simple: Did I live fully? Did I love well?" Gretchen and Norm have lived fully, and they have loved well.