I love memoirs, and years ago I read It’s Always Something, the terrific memoir by actor and comedian Gilda Radner, and I also read Kiss Me Like a Stranger, the equally terrific memoir by actor, comedian, and writer Gene Wilder. These two huge stars were married in 1984, and were married until Gilda Radner died from ovarian cancer in 1989.

You may remember Gilda Radner as Roseanne Roseannadanna or Baba Wawa on the TV show Saturday Night Live, where she was one of the seven original cast members. You may remember Gene Wilder as Willie Wonka in the original movie of Willie Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, or from the movie Young Frankenstein, which he co-wrote and starred in as Dr. Frederick Frankenstein.

Reading the two memoirs together was very interesting, because at some points, as a reader, I was able to see both of their perspectives about the same situations. In particular, the double story of how they came to get married has stuck with me for more than a decade.

According to Gilda Radner’s version, she’d been a longtime fan of Gene Wilder’s work, and the first time they met, she fell hard in love—but the situation was complicated. She was married, and Gene had been married and divorced twice and wasn’t eager to get married again. She had just bought a house in Connecticut, and he lived in Los Angeles.

Time passed, Gilda got a divorce, and the two of them lived together on and off for two and a half years. Gilda really, really, really wanted to get married, and she did everything she could to bring that about. At one point, they broke up, because Gene said he was suffocating, and that her needs were smothering.

She was very sad about the break-up, so she got a dog—Sparkle, a little five-pound Yorkshire terrier.

Gilda and Gene were split up for about five weeks, and when they got back together, Sparkle was also part of their relationship. They both loved that dog.

Gilda was still eager to get married, and of this period, she writes of Gene, “He was still fighting for independence and I was all for smothering suffocation.”

In his account, Gene writes: “I told Gilda that we weren’t ready for marriage; that my reason for not wanting to get married, yet, was not about love, but about her dependency. I could hardly make a move without her wondering where I was, where I would be, why didn’t I want to do this instead of that.”

They were stuck, and then something happened.

Gilda and Gene had planned a grand vacation in the South of France, with Sparkle, to celebrate Gene’s birthday, and on the way, they planned to stop in New York City to see Gene’s sister Corinne and family. While they were waiting in the airport in Los Angeles, Gilda saw Sparkle sniffing something in the corner, and she realized that Sparkle might have eaten some of the pellets of rat poison that had spilled out of the box.

She and Gene called the poison center, and were told, “Get her to a vet immediately.” So Gilda grabs up Sparkle and tells Gene, “I’ll meet you in New York later.” She rushes out to get to a vet, finds a vet who gives Sparkle an injection so that she throws up the pellet, which would indeed have made the little dog very sick. Because ongoing treatment was needed, Gilda told Gene to go on ahead to France.

Here’s are lightly edited versions of what Gene Wilder and Gilda Radner write.

Gene writes:

Gilda said, “Go see Corinne and then go to France. You’re so tired, and you need a rest. I know you love me. You know I love you. I’ll be fine. There’s a little birthday present for you in the green suitcase. And don’t worry about me—I’ll be fine.”

“Don’t worry about me—I’ll be fine.” It may seem like small potatoes, but I had waited so long for her to say something like that.

…

When I returned to Los Angeles, I proposed to Gilda…You have to believe me—if the dog hadn’t eaten the rat poison, I honestly don’t think that Gilda and I would ever have gotten married.

This is what Gilda writes:

Gene did go, but he went thinking, Well, she has definitely grown up, she has matured. I wouldn’t let him out of my sight before then, and this was me acting in a very responsible way.

 When Gene came back from France, he gave me an engagement ring. 

I’ve remembered this story, told two ways, for a long time, and I think that it has stuck with me because it has several possible meanings. Here are a few that are particularly interesting to me:

First, we never know what’s good news and what’s bad news. In this case, a terrifying episode turned out to have a joyful outcome.

Second, on the Happier podcast, we’ve talked many times about an idea suggested by a listener. Someone had written in to ask for suggestions about how she could regain her peace of mind after losing her beloved wedding ring; she just felt so awful about the loss, she couldn’t move past it. Another listener wrote in to suggest, “In our culture, Japanese sometimes believe things can take your place in the event of a bad happening such as an accident. It’s totally a myth but it is not too difficult to think of losing things that way for us. Maybe the listener who lost her wedding ring can think that her precious ring protected her from bad things.”

Maybe, in this case, Sparkle endured this painful episode in order that her beloved Gilda and Gene could come together in marriage.

The third point is more relevant to Gilda Radner’s side of the story: In our love and concern for others, we can forget ourselves, and in caring for the suffering of others, we can transcend the pain of our own fears and needs. In his book Ethics for the New Millennium, the Dalai Lama writes:

We find that not only do altruistic actions bring about happiness, but they also lessen our experience of suffering. Here I am not suggesting that the individual whose actions are motivated by the wish to bring others’ happiness necessarily meets with less misfortune than the one who does not. Sickness, old age, and mishaps of one sort or another are the same for us all. But the sufferings which undermine our internal peace—anxiety, frustration, disappointment—are definitely less. In our concern for others, we worry less about ourselves. When we worry less about ourselves, the experience of our own suffering is less intense.

This sweet story about the dog Sparkle has many profound meanings.