Hidden Happy Surprises!

This is a picture of me with Sue at a work party
when we worked together at Ford

I have written in this blog before about hidden grief land mines. They are little triggers that I don't see coming, that make the grief come to the surface and feel very painful. Today I want to talk about what I've decided to call "Hidden Happy Surprises". Fortunately this is a phenomenon that is happening to me enough these days that I needed to name it. This is a trigger that makes me think of Sue or my dad, but instead of feeling very painful, these experiences make me feel happy.

Today I hopped into my car while out running errands and turned on the radio. The song playing was called "The Freshman" by a group called "The Verve Pipe".  This song and band was at its height of popularity in the early to mid-nineties, when Sue and I were working together at Ford Motor Co. When I heard this song today, which I hadn't heard in years, I remembered a friend and co-worker of ours named Rob.  Rob loved this group with his whole heart. He had gone to college with the guys in the band and was so genuinely excited about their success that he would talk about them often.

Sue, upon first hearing about the group, mistakenly called them, "The Verve Pipes". Rob quickly corrected her. It was "The Verve Pipe," not plural.  The next time she referred to them as "Verve Pipe". Rob corrected her again. The word, "The" is part of the group's name.

Then it came flooding back to me that after that initial exchange, Sue went out of her way to always, ALWAYS refer to the band as either "Verve Pipe" or "The Verve Pipes". At first Rob would nicely correct her, and she would nod and say, "Ohhh, right! The Verve Pipe!" only to turn around and call them "The Verve Pipes" or "Verve Pipe" an hour later. It drove Rob crazy. It was such a stupid thing, but she continued annoying him this way for YEARS.

As I sat in my van, reliving all of this in my mind, I started to laugh. It was just SUCH a Sue thing to do. I laughed, and I laughed, and I laughed some more.

Somehow this memory triggered me to feel so happy instead of so sad. It's weird how this happens, but I still have a smile on my face because of this hidden happy surprise. I'm so thankful that I got to have Sue as my sister. She made me laugh constantly.