The Moment of Truth: The Moth Podcast

This episode originally aired on April 17, 2020 This week's episode is all about moments of truth. Our three slam stories are about awakenings, life-changing choices and everything in between. Hosted by The Moth’s Executive Producer, Sarah Austin Jenness. Storytellers: Tim Sommers, Emma Becker, Kathleen Sheffer

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Welcome to The Moth Podcast. I'm your host this week, Sarah Austin Jenness. Okay, we have three stories for you in this episode, all about a moment of truth. We're talking epiphanies, breaking points, and big-time decisions. First up, Tim Summers. Tim told the story at a Pittsburgh Story Slam, where the theme of the night was "Fresh." Here's Tim, live at The Moth.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  I was a horrible, raging alcoholic for 25 years. Here's the thing about being a drunk, or really, any kind of addict for that long. The longer you go on, the less you have to lose, and the more you just say to yourself, "Why quit now? I've already lost everything." I lost girlfriends, a wife, a house, jobs, money, self-respect. They say that the only way that you can quit is for yourself. I don't know about that. I quit for a girl. Or, at least, I quit when it became clear that I had one thing in my life that was worth quitting for, and that was Stacy.

• 1:11Speaker 01

  We had dated all through college, and we broke up the last day of college, and we got back together 25 years later. And it wasn't just being with her, but it was also that she was with me before everything went wrong, and it felt like it was another chance to be the person I was back then, before everything went wrong. I got sober on October 21st, 2013. For the first...

• 1:41Speaker 01

  For the first year, I was sober. I was sober, but I wasn't drunk, but I wasn't really sober yet. And for the second year, I was finally starting to be clear. And during the third year, I started to ask myself what I was gonna do with the rest of my life that I had left. You see, I hadn't had a job since 2011, when I was in a horrific car accident. This is how horrific the car accident was. At the scene of the car accident, during the two hours that it took to cut me out of the car, I passed my cellphone to a fireman and asked him to call my mom, and I could hear him on the phone saying, "I'm really sorry, ma'am, but I don't think he's gonna make it." So I asked for my phone back.

• 2:28Speaker 01

  This is how, this is how much of a drunk I was at the time. When I woke up in the smoking wreckage of my car, my very first thought is, "Is there any way I can make it back to St. Louis before the liquor stores close?"

• 2:40Speaker 01

  So anyway, I was trying to think about, you know, what to do, what to, how to get a fresh start, and I thought, "The one thing that I used to like to do was to teach." A long, a long time ago, I had been a philosophy professor, and I got a tenure-track job at Louisiana State, which I lost because of my drinking. But even after that, I did a bunch of adjunct teaching. But it had been a long time, and I still only had a master's degree, so I was gonna need help. So I called my old dissertation advisor at Brown, let's call him Dave, because that's his name.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  And I said, you know, "Would you like me to write a recommendation to do some teaching or whatever?" And we started talking. And after a while, he said, "What do you really wanna do?" And I said, "I really wanna come back to Brown and finish my PhD." And the weird thing is, I hadn't had that thought in my mind. It just popped out of nowhere. And he said, "Look, let's do that then." So he took it to the department, and the department voted to let me come back. And he went to the dean, and the dean had his doubts. So he said, "Do the application, get some letters of recantations." I took the GRE over again, almost thirty years to the day after the first time I took the GRE. So he took that all to the dean, and the dean said, "No, he can't come back." So I thought, I wasn't that hurt, I wasn't that upset. So I tried, right?

• 3:56Speaker 01

  But Dave said, "Look, work with me for a year. Study, research, write. There's gonna be a new dean next year. Let's try it then, and we'll have a better case." So I did that. I worked for a whole year. I wrote over forty thousand, uh, words. It was the length of a short novel, right? I got new letters of recantation. I went through the whole thing again. My, uh, Dave went to the new dean, and the new dean said, "No, he can't come back."

• 4:24Speaker 01

  He didn't look at the letters of recognition, he didn't read the paper, he just said, "No, he can't come back, it's been too long." And this time, I was really crushed. I mean, it was like a blow to the stomach. I was so upset, because I had thought, "I'm not even sure I'm really gonna do it. If they ask me to come back, maybe I'll come back, maybe I won't come back." But now, I was crushed, and I was trying to think about why. And it took me almost two weeks to realize, "Why?" And that felt almost as bad as the bad news. Because I realized that I wanted to come back, because I thought if I went back to graduate school, and I started over where I left off, that would be like, none of that other stuff had ever happened. Like, the whole 25 years, then I'd get it back, you know? I started drinking in my early twenties, and I stopped drinking when I was almost 50.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  That's 25 years, it's like I went to sleep and woke up 50 years old. I mean, it's a lot of time to lose. It's a bitter fucking pill to swallow. When I first got sober, this guy Crispy said to me, "If you wanna stay sober, Tim, you have to stop sitting around trying to have a better past." Now, first of all, if you're taking advice from a guy named Crispy...

• 5:35Speaker 01

  But second of all, I hadn't even managed to take Crispy's advice, because here I was, still thinking I could just have it all back.

• 5:46Speaker 01

  But then, something unbelievable happened. When I had been preparing to try and get back into Brown, David said, "Why don't you apply a few other places?" And I really wasn't into it, but I did it, and blah blah blah. And I got a offer from the University of Iowa to come there to study next year with full support, even student healthcare. I might be the first person ever to go straight from student healthcare to Medicare.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  It's not Brown, but Brown just felt like an attempt to relive the same thing, and this feels like a fresh start. So I'm going to Iowa next week. I don't know if I'm gonna go there next year, but hopefully. Thank you.

• 6:33Speaker 00

  That was Tim Summers. Tim has told over 45 stories at Moth Slams. He writes a monthly column for Three Quarks Daily and he's finishing a novel called Call Me Max, which is a comedy about the devil. He was also Prince's bodyguard for one night. Just after Tim told this story, he accepted the offer of admission to the PhD program in Philosophy at the University of Iowa. But most importantly, he says, he married Stacy, the girl who saved his life. To see photos of Tim at school and on his wedding day, head to our website, themoth.org.

• 7:10Speaker 02

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• 7:55Speaker 02

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• 8:08Speaker 00

  Emma Becker told our next story at a Moth Slam in Atlanta, where the theme of the night was intentions. Here's Emma.

• 8:21Speaker 03

  I was sitting at a plastic table, in a plastic chair, on one of those heinously overcrowded cruise ships in an open-air atrium. And the boat was somewhere between Vancouver and Alaska. And I myself was floating somewhere between the ninth and 10th grade. It was summer and my family was on vacation and I was taking a much-needed moment of solitude in my plastic haven. And as is fairly typical for my family vacations, that solitude was interrupted pretty quickly. What was weird was that it was someone I didn't know. It was an old man, at least in his late 70s, and his body looked lived-in

• 9:04Speaker 03

  and his Hawaiian shirt was like, oh, man, like hanging off his shoulders. But his eyes were like this blue color and they were sparkling and he was smiling at me. And he said, "Excuse me, I couldn't help but notice that you were writing a letter." And I never see young people writing letters these days. "And could you just tell me, is it a love letter?" And like, I wanted to tell him the truth. I fully intended to and the truth was like, "No." "My friend Vivian moved to Minnesota. Now we write each other. It's like a whole thing. It's how we talk to each other." But when I opened my mouth to tell him that, he was just like looking at me and he looked so hopeful.

• 9:48Speaker 03

  And what came out of my mouth was, "Yes. I am writing a love letter. Like, you caught me." And he smiled at me and he nodded and he walked away. And as is the case with heinously large cruise ships, I literally never saw him again. But I did go back to the paper in my hands and I finished my letter by telling Vivian about this man and how I'd lied to him and how it had probably made his day.

• 10:18Speaker 03

  And our cruise went on. We made port in Alaska in an incredibly tiny town. And I went to its incredibly tiny post office and I mailed my letter south to Minnesota. And by the time Vivian had received it and responded and sent it back off, I was home in Massachusetts.

• 10:38Speaker 03

  I started checking the mailbox for that letter like probably four days before it could have reasonably arrived. I sincerely hope that all of you have had the experience of getting like a proper letter, not a billing statement or a Christmas card, but like, like a letter for you because it's the best feeling in the world. And I, I loved getting letters from Vivian because I thought she wrote about her life in the best way possible. She was interesting and she was a photographer and sometimes she'd send me her pictures. And she hated the suburbs that she was in. They were inexplicably worse than the one she'd left me in. And she hated Minnesota. She called all the lakes lesions. And that letter arrived and I walked up back up the driveway like I was flying.

• 11:23Speaker 03

  And I read it and it was exactly what you would expect someone between the summer of ninth and 10th grade to write. It was a lot about her life. And at the end she said this. She said, "And Emma, about what you told that man on the boat that you were writing a letter, a love letter. I don't think that's a stretch at all because that's exactly what I feel when I get these letters from you. It's love."

• 11:52Speaker 03

  This was way before I ever came out to myself and it was like even longer before I came out to anybody else. I was in like my success stage where there were women in my life that I deeply wanted to do the best in everything they ever wanted to do in their lives. I just, I wanted them to succeed. And now and later, I guess, being able to look back on that correspondence, I can look at those letters and see that we loved each other without knowing it. And in a way that I think of as like sincerely endemic to the suburbs and to youth. And it was like a love that was without ambition or outcome. And by the time either of us could have possibly acknowledged that it was happening,

• 12:37Speaker 03

  it was like past the moment where it would have mattered and been actionable. And just like into this moment of like once love that we like really happily resided in for another five or six years. We stopped being pen pals in senior year of college. And that was OK. And when I think back on that, that written relationship and the way that it existed in my life, I think what I'm most grateful for is that old man and his sparkling eyes and his question that I would have never asked myself in that moment. And it gave me one chance in the time that I was writing those letters to say exactly what I intended to be putting into them, which was love.

• 13:25Speaker 00

  Emma Becker is a Massachusetts transplant who's currently living in Atlanta and working for an e-commerce company. A true progeny of the liberal arts and a new fan of the fried green tomato, she fills her free time with good books and farmers markets. Emma is still pen pals with some of the friends she's met in her travels over the years. She says, quote, "I'm still a firm believer in the letter as a form of communication. It's a unique opportunity to say everything you want to say exactly as you want to say it." To see photos from Emma's trip to Alaska and some of the letters she mentioned in her story, check out our website, themoth.org. Our last storyteller in this episode, all about moments of truth, is Kathleen Schiffer.

• 14:10Speaker 00

  She told this at a story slam in San Francisco where the theme of the night was do-over. Here's Kathleen, live at the mall.

• 14:25Speaker 04

  So, last May, I was sitting in Union Square, talking to my friend Austin, and I was telling him that I would never get a heart-lung transplant. It was a treatment option for the disease that I had, pulmonary hypertension. But it was so unappealing, because I would have, my immune system would be compromised for the rest of my life. I'd take a lot of medication, I'd have to wear a mask in crowds. I had friends who had gotten transplants before, some of them were doing well, some of them weren't. The survival statistics weren't that great, and I was 23.

• 15:10Speaker 04

  A few days later, I got on a plane and flew to Seattle for a photography job. But I never made it to the job, because I woke up in my friend's apartment, and I was wheezing, I couldn't catch my breath, I was coughing up blood on, like, in her toilet. So, I, she called 911, I got in an ambulance, I called my parents, I texted my sister to tell her that I loved her, because I didn't know if I would be alive when she read that text. So, when my doctors at Stanford called me in Seattle and said that it was time to be

• 15:52Speaker 04

  listed for a transplant, it sounded like a pretty good option. I couldn't walk around a block on four liters of oxygen. And, so I was listed at Stanford, and usually, once you go active on the list, you wait for a year, three years. I had friends who were still waiting for transplants. I waited 28 days, and then I got a call at 7:50 a.m. I was woken up, and went through a checklist with a Stanford employee who sounded more nervous than I do now. No, I didn't have a cold, no, I hadn't received any recent blood transfusions.

• 16:35Speaker 04

  I could be at the hospital in two hours. So, we threw, my parents and my sister, and I threw stuff in bags, and got in the car, drove to Stanford.

• 16:48Speaker 04

  We got there at 10 a.m. and they said that my surgery was scheduled for noon that afternoon. So we thought, okay, this is happening. But I didn't go downstairs, I didn't get wheeled to the operating room for, until 8 p.m. So there was plenty of time for friends and family to arrive, for my dad to do the last IV medication pump change. And for us to spend a lot of time thinking about the people who were grieving while we were celebrating my new chance at life.

• 17:23Speaker 04

  When, by the time I went down to, downstairs, I had 10 people to say goodbye to. We were walking in a parade of my, my hospital bed. And then my parents waited outside the operating room doors with me. And I chose that time to go over my last wishes with my mom, to give her my social media passwords and

• 17:58Speaker 04

  It's important, okay?

• 18:01Speaker 04

  And discuss where donations should be sent in the event of my death. Like, how they should have a party instead of a funeral, just normal things you talk about with your 23-year-old daughter. In the operating room, I ended up waiting two hours because the organs were stuck in traffic. So the anesthesiologist asked me what kind of music I wanted to listen to. So, I should also say, my heart rate was normally about 60 beats per minute. That day, it was 130 beats per minute and I could not calm down. So I was like, trying to do some drawings to calm myself. And I don't trust myself to choose the playlist for a party at my house.

• 18:46Speaker 04

  So choosing the Pandora station for a roomful of people tasked with keeping me alive for the next few hours was a whole new level of terrifying.

• 18:56Speaker 04

  And it might be the last thing that I listen to.

• 19:00Speaker 04

  So stressful. Heart rate probably went up. But I chose blind pilot and the only complaints coming from the room were about the anesthesiologist's lack of a paid subscription. We listened to ads between songs. Then around 10 at night, they had visualized the organs. The surgeons said it was a go. They called my parents and said they were putting me under. At that point, I was really only concerned for the people in the waiting room because I knew that my body would fight for me.

• 19:38Speaker 04

  I'd had open-heart surgery as a baby and I knew I would keep going under anesthesia. So, last week, I celebrated 200 days post-transplant. And in December, I went ice skating with my friend Austin in Union Square. And, yes, I am pretty shaky because I am taking a lot of drugs and I'm wearing a mask. But I'm really, really grateful for this second chance at life.

• 20:23Speaker 00

  That was Kathleen Scheffler. Kathleen works as an event photographer in San Francisco, and she strives to make her subjects feel seen and loved. And since telling her story, Kathleen has actually photographed five live events for The Moth. We wanted to hear more from Kathleen about her recovery and how she's doing. Here's Kathleen reading her response.

• 20:52Speaker 05

  In July, I will celebrate four years with a healthy heart and lungs gifted to me by my heroic organ donor. My donor family has received my letters of gratitude, but I don't know anything about my donor. I've recovered well from one episode of acute rejection and a couple of colds. My lung function remains in the 90th percentile for my age group. For the first time in my life, I've been able to exercise. In 2018, I summited half dome, and in 2019, I made it to the Mount Whitney Trail Camp at 12,000 feet before retreating from a hailstorm. When I had pulmonary hypertension, I had to stay below 4,000

• 21:32Speaker 05

  feet altitude, so my world has really expanded upward. I feel beyond lucky to turn 27 this month and to be living a relatively normal life. I'm so grateful to have had a million more chances to tell my sister and my parents that I love them and to fall in love with my new partner.

• 21:55Speaker 00

  That was Kathleen Scheffer. To see photos of the exciting days and hours before she received her new heart and lungs, and to check out some of Kathleen's own photography, go to our website, themoth.org. That's all for us this week. From all of us here at The Moth, have a story worthy week.

• 22:16Speaker 06

  Sarah Austin Jenness is The Moth's executive producer and one of the hosts of The Moth Radio Hour. Over the years, she's worked with hundreds of people to craft personal stories. She also launched The Moth's Global Community Program, which elevates stories from South Asia and Africa to highlight world issues, including gender equality and public health.

• 22:36Speaker 00

  Podcast production by Julia Purcell.