Have you ever watched How Stella Got Her Groove Back?

Sometimes I feel like Delilah, particularly in this one scene.

Delilah (played by Whoopi Goldberg) is in a hospital bed when she accepts a call from her bestie Stella (played by Angela Bassett). Stella is vacationing in Jamaica. Phased out of her job as a stockbroker, she has returned to the island on the invitation of a young new lover and to regroup from her job loss. We don’t know much about Delilah’s career, but we do learn that Delilah’s medical condition is terminal. Her winces suggest she is in pain. A nurse adds medication to her IV and Delilah nods her approval. Stella isn’t aware of any of this during the call.

Delilah is waxing poetic—and comically—on why (and how) Stella should enjoy her trip. The juxtaposition is stark—the physically deteriorating Delilah in a hospital offering wit and wisdom; the physically fit Stella fresh from a run on the beach oblivious to her bestie’s plight. Stella’s life seems charmed; we learn so little about Delilah’s beyond her relationship with Stella not that Delilah is not one of the main architects of the Stella of the Renewed Groove.

For all we know, Delilah may have been equally fit at some point and as paid. Her wit and wisdom might have come from life experiences other than her diagnosis that aren’t shared with viewers. We know she lives in New York and that she’s divorced. I am writing this from memory and not a rewatch so I may be off on some facts but I can say this: it seems like when we talk about how Stella came to get her groove back Delilah deserves to be mentioned as one of the critical architects of the groove.

Let’s see: the loss of Stella’s job instigates her to start examining what matters in life; her romance instigates her to take more chances—including her carpentry; Delilah’s death essentially instigates Stella’s romance with the younger Winston, or at least her finally taking it seriously. But Delilah and her labor gets muffled if not altogether muted.

I didn’t intend to write a think piece about Stella and Delilah so I’m gonna stop right here and get to the root of this metaphor. I wanted to write a think piece on the administration of chronic illness. And I will. But today, I’m just thinking about how one of its administrations is continuing to support relationships and what that administrative task can look like from the side that is not seen—Delilah’s wince if you will.

Sometimes, when I am struggling through some new or just the regular degular circumstance of my diagnosis—physical, administrative, financial—and I entertain conversations about non-problems—and I don’t mean the shooting the shit convos or to diminish what seems validly difficult to the person facing it but what seem to me to be solution-obvious situations that I wish were the extent of my own, I feel as unseen as Delilah. Like the person deep in the throes of drowning, head just above water, talking someone in the shallow end through how to simply stand up in the water. And then they stand and move forward in ways you never will.

Stella couldn’t have known what Delilah didn’t tell her about the precarity of her situation. It’s not until Delilah’s oncologist calls Stella that she learns and flies to New York to spend her last precious days with Delilah before releasing her bestie to eternity. So this is and isn’t an indictment of people in relationships with people who live with chronic conditions and all its administrative tasks. Like Stella, maybe they never told you they be out here drowning.  And maybe for you that shallow water doesn’t seem so shallow since you didn’t or don’t realize you can stand. Just know that they’re probably playing Delilah on their side of the conversation. And since they know a little something about drowning they don’t want you to.