Strawberries
I first met Wynn Martin ten years ago this month, as part of a spectacular Valentine's Day surprise for a mutual friend. While we rarely saw each other, we stayed in contact for most of the past decade.
Wynn visited me in Los Angeles in the spring of 1998. Today I cannot remember the reason for his visit, but that doesn't matter - it felt like he was there to see me. He flew in early that morning, and I picked him up and deposited him at my apartment before heading off to work.
I came home to the overpowering smell of fresh fruit. "I can't believe the strawberries you have!" a voice exclaimed. Wynn had somehow found a local farmer's market and, in his first true exposure to in-season California produce, had picked up an entire flat of strawberries.
"Wynn, do you have any idea how much this is? Strawberries last thirty-six, maybe forty-eight hours! There's no way we can use this!" I pleaded.
He was unperturbed, so we trotted off to Ralph's to buy rum and pie crusts. I spent the evening making daiquiris and pies, desperately working through the mountain of strawberries as we gradually became tipsy.
I cannot remember what we ate for dinner, nor what movie we watched as we drank our fresh daiquiris. Still, I clearly remember sitting close together on my living room floor, after the movie had ended, and talking about pain. I had a unique and complicated history with migraine headaches, and had also recently recovered from an unrelated surgery, and I was talking about the various efficacies of the painkillers I had been prescribed. Wynn knew them all, but responded with a different position - he used none of them.
I asked him how that was possible, after eighteen surgeries, and he went into a long discussion about his relationship with pain. He lived every day in what I would call physical agony, and he eloquently described the role of that sensation in his life. But, somehow, he didn't suffer. He said that the pain told him he was alive, told him his body was whole and healthy, that it was sending him the messages it was meant to send him.
I thought at that moment that he must have been the strongest person I had ever met, in order to live through that kind of physical pain. I haven't met anyone since that would make me change my mind. We slept next to each other that night, sharing comfort and warmth, and that surgically repaired leg wrapped around my body, keeping me close.
After a long hiatus, Wynn and I resumed contact a couple of months ago. I celebrated when he finished his nursing degree; he put the "dic" in "valedictorian," he gleefully boasted. I look at my inbox and feel one e-mail short, wishing I could summarize what our brief and intense interactions meant to me. He'd tell me not to worry, though. This pain is simply my body telling me that I'm alive.
Jeremy Brown
Wynn visited me in Los Angeles in the spring of 1998. Today I cannot remember the reason for his visit, but that doesn't matter - it felt like he was there to see me. He flew in early that morning, and I picked him up and deposited him at my apartment before heading off to work.
I came home to the overpowering smell of fresh fruit. "I can't believe the strawberries you have!" a voice exclaimed. Wynn had somehow found a local farmer's market and, in his first true exposure to in-season California produce, had picked up an entire flat of strawberries.
"Wynn, do you have any idea how much this is? Strawberries last thirty-six, maybe forty-eight hours! There's no way we can use this!" I pleaded.
He was unperturbed, so we trotted off to Ralph's to buy rum and pie crusts. I spent the evening making daiquiris and pies, desperately working through the mountain of strawberries as we gradually became tipsy.
I cannot remember what we ate for dinner, nor what movie we watched as we drank our fresh daiquiris. Still, I clearly remember sitting close together on my living room floor, after the movie had ended, and talking about pain. I had a unique and complicated history with migraine headaches, and had also recently recovered from an unrelated surgery, and I was talking about the various efficacies of the painkillers I had been prescribed. Wynn knew them all, but responded with a different position - he used none of them.
I asked him how that was possible, after eighteen surgeries, and he went into a long discussion about his relationship with pain. He lived every day in what I would call physical agony, and he eloquently described the role of that sensation in his life. But, somehow, he didn't suffer. He said that the pain told him he was alive, told him his body was whole and healthy, that it was sending him the messages it was meant to send him.
I thought at that moment that he must have been the strongest person I had ever met, in order to live through that kind of physical pain. I haven't met anyone since that would make me change my mind. We slept next to each other that night, sharing comfort and warmth, and that surgically repaired leg wrapped around my body, keeping me close.
After a long hiatus, Wynn and I resumed contact a couple of months ago. I celebrated when he finished his nursing degree; he put the "dic" in "valedictorian," he gleefully boasted. I look at my inbox and feel one e-mail short, wishing I could summarize what our brief and intense interactions meant to me. He'd tell me not to worry, though. This pain is simply my body telling me that I'm alive.
Jeremy Brown
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