Lessons from Nightbirde

Many of you may know that today marks the one-year anniversary of the loss of my husband, the irreplaceable Victor R. Love. 😉

I actually don't know what to say. I know! Me! Without words!

So instead, I'm going to tell you about Nightbirde.

One of the things Vic loved doing at night before he went to sleep was watch YouTube videos. He would often watch photography videos or videos of rafts he wanted to buy or even vacuum cleaners. (The man was obsessed with vacuum cleaners.) But then he discovered Britain's Got Talent.

Neither of us love reality shows. Let's face it—they're not real. And although talent shows are more real than, say, The Bachelor (sorry, Bachelor lovers), they still have a lot of filler. So Vic found the videos that just showed performances, and he was hooked. I cannot tell you how many times he watched Collabro sing “Stars.”

And you know how YouTube works. You find one video to watch and YouTube tees you up with 100 more similar videos. “5 auditions that broke the internet,” “10 most viewed America's Got Talent auditions 2021,” “10 unforgettable auditions that got Simon Cowell's Golden Buzzer on Got Talent” and the like.

That's how we found Nightbirde. Nightbirde was a singer who auditioned on America's Got Talent in June last year. She came out and did the chitchat with the judges and mentioned that she would be singing an original song called “It's OK,” the story of her life for the past year. Her demeanor was positive, and she always had a smile on her face. Eventually Howie Mandel asked her what she did for a living, and she admitted she hadn't been working for quite a few years because she'd been dealing with cancer. She said she was OK, but then Simon Cowell asked her how she was now, and she said that the last time she checked, she had some cancer in her lungs, her spine and her liver. Howie said, “So you're not OK.” And she said, “Well, not in every way, no.” But she continued: “It's important that everyone knows I'm so much more than the bad things that happen to me.”

Then she sang her song. She sang it with so much joy and emotion, and there wasn't a dry eye in the house. Silence when she finished, followed by cheers and a standing ovation. The judges loved her. Even Simon was in awe of how she had sung so beautifully after she just told everyone what she'd been doing through. And she said, “You can't wait until life isn't hard anymore before you decide to be happy.” But Simon, he's always the hard ass. And even as he was choked up, he said he wasn't going to give her a yes. He got a lot of side-eye from Sofia Vergara, let me tell you. But then he gave her the Golden Buzzer instead—where a judge presses a big gold button in the middle of the table and sends the contestant into the next round regardless of whether the other judges were going to vote her or him in. It was magical. We watched that audition quite a few times.

But like I said, we don't watch reality TV, so we didn't know what happened to her after that. And then Vic ... you know ... died. So one day I Googled her to see what was happening. Alas, she had had to drop out of the show only two months after that breathtaking audition. She felt she needed to focus on her treatment. She joined the show by video, still smiling, grateful and overwhelmed that her little song touched so many people. She was thinner. She looked frailer. But her demeanor was still strong, positive. She was a fighter.

When July 8, 2022, arrived—the one-year anniversary of the day Vic came home to hospice—my demeanor faltered. I was sadder. Had more spontaneous outbursts of tears. Wasn't able to turn a “sad because it's over” memory into a “smile because it happened.”

On Monday, guess what appeared on my shower playlist? “Stars,” by Collabro. I thought about all the times we watched that video together and sobbed in the shower. But that night, I decided to go traipsing around YouTube, just like Vic used to. (I mean, not just like Vic, because I watched about five MsMojo videos about Grey's Anatomy.) Including that “Stars” audition. It was fun reliving that moment, even though I missed watching it with Vic.

And then I thought about Nightbirde. “I should check in on her,” I said—out loud—to no one (because Bella is still spending about 20 hours a day in my closet). I found that great audition video and watched it again. But it didn't tell me what she was doing now. “Doing now,” present tense, because she was strong. She was a fighter. She was positive. I was sure she had beaten the odds (2%, she said at her first audition).

Alas, she had not beaten the odds. Jane “Nightbirde” Marczewski passed away on February 19. She was 31. I watched the news announcement in a video from Entertainment Tonight. In it, Nightbirde was clearly even more depleted. Yet she was still smiling, and still inspiring others. She said, “Just because you're sad or grieving doesn't mean that you're not grateful and it doesn't mean you're not hopeful. ... It's all real, the joy and the pain; it's all real, and you don't have to pick one or the other—life is beautiful or life is garbage. It's kinda both sometimes.”

Let us all practice what Nightbirde exemplified: courage, joy, acceptance of the good and the bad, hope and gratitude.

So I am still sad, and I am still grieving—the one-year mark didn't turn off a switch as I'd hoped it might 😂—but I am also grateful and hopeful. Grateful for my family and friends (all of you). For Bella. For random people who are kind to me. For the build-your-own mac & cheese from Longmont Public House. And hopeful. Hopeful that I will live long enough to crochet most of my yarn stash. That I will finally clean off my DVR. That more bird families will make their home on my porch. That I will have many more years with Bella.

I leave you on this one-year anniversary not with a picture of Vic or by Vic, but a picture of me and Bella under a tree in the back yard of our new house. Vic is here—he's everywhere in the furniture we picked out together, the photographs on my walls, the ring I will always wear on my finger. But Bella and I are moving forward, and we are doing that without the physical presence of Vic.

It's all real, the joy and the pain. But I am so much more than the bad things that have happened to me. And I am not waiting until life isn't hard anymore to decide to be happy.