So, this question popped up, ‘is Barbara Nicklaus ill?’ and I thought, yeah, people wonder these things. She’s been around, Jack’s wife, for what feels like forever. A real pillar of strength, from everything you hear. You hear they’ve been in that same house down in Florida since way back, maybe since 1970 or so. Got a whole bunch of kids and grandkids too, a big family.
So I did what I usually do when I hear something, I started to poke around a bit online, you know, just to see what the story was. Tried a few different ways of searching, looked at some of the usual spots where news might pop up. And you know what I found? Mostly nothing solid. Just a lot of quiet. And you know, that’s probably for the best, if you ask me. Folks deserve their privacy, especially when it comes to personal health stuff.
It really made me think of old Mrs. Henderson from my old neighborhood. She was sweet as pie, that lady. Always out in her garden, tending to her roses, always had a wave for you. Then, all of a sudden, poof, she wasn’t out there as much. We didn’t see her puttering around for a week or two. And the chatter started, you know how it gets in a close-knit place. ‘Oh, heard she’s poorly.’ ‘Someone mentioned she might have taken a fall.’ All sorts of worrying talk began to spread.
I got myself a bit worked up too, I’ll admit. Started asking ’round, real quiet-like, ‘Anyone seen Mrs. H lately?’ Found myself glancing over at her porch more often, like a darn snoop, checking if her newspaper was picked up. Felt a bit daft about it later, I tell ya, because I was jumping to all sorts of conclusions.
And what was the real deal? Her daughter, who lived way out west, had flown in with all the grandkids for a surprise, extended visit! Mrs. Henderson was just completely snowed under, having the absolute time of her life, baking up a storm, reading stories, and just soaking up all that family time. She wasn’t ill at all; she was just busy living it up, indoors mostly, with her loved ones.
That whole episode kinda stuck with me. It taught me a good lesson. We see one little thing, or maybe we don’t see something we expect, and our brains just go into overdrive, cooking up all sorts of scenarios, often the gloomy ones. But people’s private lives are just that – private. And health, well, that’s about as personal as it gets.
So now, when I hear questions like ‘is Barbara Nicklaus ill?’, I just remember Mrs. Henderson. Unless the Nicklaus family themselves are putting information out there, it ain’t really our place to be digging around, expecting the worst, or speculating. They’ve built a life, Jack’s been on the road a ton over the years with his golf course design work, all over Asia and Europe I hear, and he even went through that stem cell therapy for his back. They’ve got enough going on, I reckon, like any family.
My little journey of trying to find out, and then remembering Mrs. H, just reinforced it for me. It’s better to just send good thoughts their way and respect their space. That’s the main thing I took away from my ‘practice’ this time around.
