A Reminder for the Heart

Sometimes you have to pick between being with loved ones and dealing with work. Do you stay late and work, or do you enjoy having dinner with your family, being with the people you love? Choosing can be agony because you have to pick something, and "every time you pick something you're ending a possibility" (paraphrased from A. Christensen). For some of us, there's a lot of torture around choice.

For some reason I don't understand, very recently, that tension let go of me. I decide on something, then embrace it, rather than "live with it." I don't know where that came from, but it's a little bit of peace I didn't have before and I'm grateful for it. Since most of us deal with choices like this all the time, I wanted to offer that idea hoping it'll help you put the torture down too.

I have an example under the category of "knowing what matters." This isn't intended as any kind of advertisement, though there are mentions of a company and it's products. It's a present. Thank you, Chris, for allowing me to share this.

This is the email I received from Roger + Chris on September 5th, 2023:

"This newsletter isn’t about sofas. Or interior design. Or finding the very best stain-resistant fabric to hold up to your Labrador.

Sorry. We’ll talk about that another day.

I don’t feel like writing about any of those things, frankly, because the last few months of our life – for Roger and Chris the humans, not Roger + Chris the company – have been really rough. Instead of being smiley and happy and trying to talk you into buying a sofa from us (which you still should, because ours are the best), I want to talk to you about the importance of appreciating what you have and never taking a moment for granted.

In early June, Roger suffered an esophageal puncture. It’s a weird injury – an errant cruton at dinner tore a little hole in his esophagus. It’s the sort of event that could happen to any of us at any time. Within hours, it led to fluid in his chest cavity, then a massive infection, then unbearable pain. We rushed him to the ER, and he was scheduled for emergency surgery.

This all snowballed in less than 48 hours, and it was almost too late to save him.

Roger was in the hospital for over 50 days, nearly all of that spent in the ICU. He was intubated, with a machine breathing for him. He was on 24/7 dialysis to detoxify his blood. He was on as many as fourteen different IV drips, a feeding tube, later a tracheostomy, six drains to clear the pockets of infection in his chest, you name it. Days turned into weeks turned into months of promising ups and terrifying downs, progress followed by soul-crushing setbacks. We were at the edge of losing him so many times that I’ve lost count. I spent so long sitting beside the hospital bed my husband, my best friend, my business partner telling him how much I loved him, but knowing that he couldn’t hear me through the sedation.

He slowly, ever so gradually, got better. He has been so strong. They weaned him off the sedatives. He still couldn’t talk, but at least he could see me and hear me. We started communicating with improvised sign language, mouthing words, then him whispering through the trach. They fitted him with a voice box so he could speak for a few minutes at a time. He told me he loved me. I sobbed.

We felt like we might never get him out of the hospital. But Roger, being Roger, gathered his strength and pushed to be discharged. He knew – we all knew – that his recovery couldn’t truly begin until he got home. He’s been back in our home for a month now. He’s relearned to speak, to breathe, to eat, to walk. His hands don’t quite work yet and he still has a stent protecting his healing esophagus, but he’s improving every day. Being able to be with each other, hug each other, tell each other “I love you”… absolutely priceless.

The marketing experts that I occasionally hire and then immediately fire have told me that I should be running a Labor Day Sale right now. I am not doing that. It feels crass. They told me that our newsletters need a strong “call to action” –?a prompt to get you, the person reading this, to do something. In the world of marketing, that generally means clicking on a link to buy a product.

And, sure, Roger + Chris is a company. And, sure, we have to sell furniture to survive. But we’re humans. You’re humans. And we have never wanted, in the process of creating our company, to lose sight of our shared humanity.

So here’s my “call to action” for this newsletter: Go hug your loved ones. Right now. Don’t wait. Do it now. Tell them you love them. Tell them how much they mean to you. Never miss an opportunity to do so. You will never regret it.

With love, Roger and Chris Stout-Hazard"