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Illustration: Øivind Hovland
Three days after my husband, Paul, and I drove south from New Jersey and moved into a Nashville bungalow, my spouse of 32 years went into cardiac arrest at the gym on the treadmill while I was trussing a chicken in our newly renovated kitchen. “They shocked him with a defibrillator. Got his heart beating. He’s on his way by ambulance to Ascension St. Thomas,” trembled the Southern voice of a clearly wigged-out gym employee.
I thanked her, hung up, stood frozen with the raw chicken still in hand, wondering where Ascension St. Whatever was.
Since childhood, I’d dreamt of escaping my lackluster home state, land of malls, suburban sprawl and Turnpike jokes. But life kept me—and eventually my Long Island-born husband—firmly planted.
We finally busted a move during the pandemic, downsizing from our Montclair colonial into a nearby rental and purchasing a little haven in Music City. We’d split our time between North and South and, eventually, let go of Jersey, we reasoned, once we’d adjusted.
Standing alone on that January day, it all felt like a cosmic joke. I sprinted next door to my new neighbor, handed her the chicken, told her my husband was probably dead, and ran off to call an Uber (our car was at the gym).
As Jason Isbell sang about hurricanes and hand grenades on the radio, I sat in the back of my paid ride, speed-dialing favorites on my phone, blurting out what had happened to the first human who picked up. I arrived at the ER to find Paul heavily drugged, but alive.
Forty-eight hours later, he emerged from quadruple bypass surgery—and I emerged into a tornado of Jersey support.
Someone, somehow, had stocked our fridge. A New York bagel with lox and a schmear miraculously made it to me in the ICU. A hefty puck of Styertowne Bakery crumb cake appeared on our porch without a note.
Day after day, calls and texts checked in. Night after night, hot meals appeared at home and at the hospital, ordered by Jersey friends who, without missing a beat, sussed out exactly what to get from where.
Once Paul was discharged, a rotating cast of Jersey angels flew down and moved in with us, sitting watch so I could shop for food or take a walk; rubbing Paul’s feet to distract him from post-surgical pain; cooking dinner while I drove him to cardiac rehab; reminding me that, with Jersey in the house, we weren’t going it alone.
That June, with rehab complete, we headed north in our Subaru for the summer. When my eyes caught sight of the “Welcome to New Jersey” sign, my heart thumped. “Hey there, land of no-frills delis, real-deal diners, legit bagels, diverse opinions, sane gun laws, decent politics, inimitable dry wit, and straightforward humans who make the best damned friends anyone will find anywhere,” I said back. “Your taxes may be high and your glamour low, but I ain’t gonna quit you. Not just yet.”
Peg Rosen and her husband, Paul, love their place in Nashville, but still consider Montclair home.
