What Should I Do with the Rest of My Life_ - Bruce Frankel [100]
Nancy’s prospects brightened still more when she came across an advertisement for a then-novel program at St. Joseph’s College in suburban Indiana. By documenting their life experiences, perspective students could receive college credits and reduce the total number of credits needed to receive a degree. Nancy, then forty-five, spent months tracking down information and gathering testimonials for her various work experiences. When Jim delivered five bound notebooks she had compiled, the college’s dean was astonished. He granted her more than sixty credits. At once, Nancy Gagliano was college bound and nearly half finished.
Her corporate ascent ended abruptly four years later. She came down with the flu and for the first time since starting work at Montgomery Ward she had to call in sick. She returned to work a few days later. But by 10 A.M. her first day back, she slumped over her desk and could barely move. Eventually, she pushed herself up, walked to her car, and drove the 175 blocks to the nearest clinic. She collapsed as she entered its doors and was rushed to the hospital. Doctors performed a battery of tests, but were stumped. Nancy was sent home, but got no better. Day after day, she lay in bed, increasingly filled with despair.
“Everyone thought I was dying. To get out of bed, I had to hang on to the walls,” she said. Finally, on a hunch, one of her doctors tested her for lupus, Epstein Barr, and rheumatoid arthritis. She tested positive for all three, a hallmark of chronic fatigue syndrome.
“She was flat on her back for months. We were lucky I worked close by then and could come home and feed her lunch,” her husband, Jim, said. When she didn’t return to work by Labor Day, Montgomery Ward terminated her without benefits, though she was literally days from being vested with long-term benefits. “They didn’t want to get stuck. I could have managed to come in for a day or two. When I found out that they were pushing me out, I said, ‘You know what you’re doing is crooked.’ But I didn’t have the strength to fight.” (Two years later, Montgomery Ward went under.)
Despite bouts of debilitating exhaustion, after five years of night school, Nancy finished her studies at St. Joseph’s and was awarded a bachelor’s degree in business administration in 1990. At age fifty, with the last of her children in college and the others establishing lives of their own, Nancy finally had the credential she needed to substitute teach in Chicago, at least on the days she felt strong enough. She had little expectation that she would ever be well enough to do more.
Fate is formidable. In August 1992, Hurricane Andrew, the second-most-destructive hurricane in United States history, slammed into southeast Florida at Homestead, causing $26.5 billion of damage. Some eighty thousand housing units were destroyed or badly damaged. One hundred sixty thousand people were left homeless, and forty-three were killed. Nancy’s daughter Denise had recently started work for Prudential Insurance and volunteered to go to Florida for the company for a year to help with the massive number of insurance claims. When her year was up, she decided to stay in Florida permanently and found an apartment to buy. She asked Nancy to drive down from Chicago to take a look. Nancy had just walked into her daughter’s place and dropped her bags when Denise said, “Mom, let’s go.”
“Where are we going?”
“I found you and Dad a house.”
The “What?” was barely out of Nancy’s mouth before mother and daughter were on their way. “As soon as the saleswoman opened the front door and I saw the water out there [through the sliding glass doors