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In the summer of 1999 my father was dying from various virulent and (then) untreatable cancers. By July we knew the end was near. It was an unbearably difficult time for all of us but he seemed to take everything with great grace and dignity. In early July after frantically looking all over the house I finally found him sitting in a chair in the backyard. “Daddy, what on earth are you doing out here?” He looked at me incredulously, smiled, and replied: “It’s a beautiful day and I’m enjoying the sunshine.” I was hardly able to hold back tears as I sat next to him and held his hand for a few minutes until he was ready to go back inside. About a week later again I went looking for him and again he was sitting outside. But this time there was a gentle but steady late July drizzle. His wet face was turned up to the sky, his eyes were closed, and he was softly smiling. I sat next to him again as he said, “Sylvia, you know, until today I had forgotten how delightful it is to feel the rain on my face, my head. And look,” now he opened his eyes and pointed to trees, the flowers, the grass, “look how they must love this! This life is so wonderful and mysterious and even with all the pain and fear, I am so lucky to be reminded of its magnificence.” The rain covered my tears. We sat there for a few minutes until he was ready to go back inside to his hospice bed. He died the following week. And this morning, more than twenty years later, as I ponder the fear and isolation and worry and pain in the world, I also look at the rain and the sun and a lone flower on my gardenia bush. I think of my dad. Now, I too, awe-filled, marvel at the fragile but powerful beauty of all life.  In 1970, on a lovely early summer day—the kind where light scents of lilac and early roses fill the air—as my mother and I walked along a sidewalk near our home in Cape May, a confused driver crashed into us pinning our bodies against a brick wall. People rushed to help us, gently and speedily. Ambulances were called, the hospital was at the ready, and we were quickly in operating rooms. My mother was in critical condition and near death. The surgeon made the difficult decision that to spare her life he would have to amputate her left leg at the thigh. She was losing a great deal of blood and our small hospital’s supply of her fairly rare blood-type, A negative, had been depleted. A call went out to our town’s Coast Guard base for help. Immediately the few cadets and officers with her blood type came to her aid. She needed a lot, but these young men were at the ready. Thanks to the helpers and the health care professionals and the “Coasties”, eventually she began to recover. Our lives never were the same, of course, but a new normal began to set in, slowly—very slowly. She learned how to navigate with the drastic changes to her body and, of course, to her life. Many years later, by complete chance, I met an ex-Coast Guard at a wedding in Cape May. I told him the story of my mom, and with the intensity of emotion you don’t expect from a complete stranger he grabbed my hands. I could see he was ready to cry. He told me he was one of those men. As I looked at him in astonishment, he continued. “The day we got the call I was at the lowest point in my life. My father had committed suicide the year before and I had never dealt with that pain and what it did to my family. I was drinking too much and I’d started gambling. I didn’t know why I stayed in the Coast Guard but I didn’t know what else to do. At 21 I thought my life was over. Nothing mattered. But then when we rushed to the hospital and they started drawing blood out of me I got this feeling…I don’t know how to describe it. As they’re taking my blood I started feeling powerful. Yeah, powerful, for the first time in a long time. I was helping someone else live. I was part, really part, of something outside of me. And your mother needed me to live.” I was dumbfounded and just stared at him as he continued. “Afterwards we all waited for days to hear how she was and when we got word that she was recovering well, we cheered. I began to see that what I did had meaning to someone else—that I could help others live. And that helping others is what gave my life purpose.” When I was able to form words again I asked him what he was doing now. “I’m a paramedic in Detroit. Best job in the world. Every day.” I hugged him, this stranger who saved my mother, and I thanked him. He spoke, “I gave her blood and she gave me a future. This life we have,” he continued, “it’s no good unless we share it. We’re all in this world together, right? We are all here for each other. In giving life we get life.”   “Look, out there—over out that window—See ‘em?” A man with gray, thin hair, stooped shoulders, and a wan complexion—a stranger--motioned to me excitedly from just across the train aisle with the wild glee of someone whose joy needed to be shared. I had been sitting in the dining car after dinner with a cup of tea, looking down at my glossy magazine, lost in the swirling dresses of Vogue’s spring season couture features, dreamily accepting the clanging of the train’s wheels and the jostling of the items on the tables. We were on our way north from Fort Lauderdale to Philadelphia, a trip that typically takes 24 hours by train.
I looked up and followed his shaky pointing fingers just in time to see geese—flocks and flocks of them—flying in formation over the south Georgia savannah lands, their bodies making long shadows over the water. The sun was starting to set and a rosy golden glow settled over the marshes. He leaned his old, spindly body back in his seat. “I always say them birds is the prettiest thing I ever did see, excepting my Sally,” he said still looking out. He turned to look at me, “Sally was my wife. Died 4 years ago, Part of me died too that day.” He picked up a cup from the table. We looked out the window in silence for a few minutes, each of sipping from our vessels. Then I asked, and he told me stories. (“Oh, she was a terrible cook—poor dear tried so hard and served it up with so much love I never said anything but good.” And, “When our son was born and she was in so much pain she looked up at me and says to me that it was the best day of her life ‘cause there was a new human that combined the best of the two of us. And here I was all worried about the money and the work. But she cut right through to the important parts.”). “How far are you going?” I asked as we reached Jessup, Georgia. He answered, “I’m going all the way to Washington, DC. My son is meeting me there—going to go live with him and his family. Don’t know how that’s going to work. My daughter-in-law, she don’t like me much—always trying to tell me what to wear and how to talk. I expect she’s not too happy about this, but my son insisted. I gotta get some medical tests. Cancer spread. I told him I’d be better off just letting the Good Lord take me in my old green chair on my porch in Palatka, but he won’t hear of it. Truth is, I want to see my grandson. He’s almost 20. I want to tell him some stories—let him know the strong people he come from. We got to tell stories—It keeps people alive.” I smiled. The sun had gone down and the windows now showed only the reflection of the inside. “How far you going?” he asked of me. I answered “Philadelphia”. He continued, “That’s a long way. I take this train cause I like to see the real land—I flew a couple of times, but it don’t feel right. That’s a place for those birds—not for me. So why do you ride the rails?” he asked. I shook my head, “I have a problem with my ears. My balance system is thrown off if I fly—the pressure causes me to feel so dizzy that I fall down. Kind of like there are magnets in my head that pull me over. It lasts for 10 days once it sets in. So my husband and I figured out how to travel a lot by train. We really like it—get a little bedroom for sleeping, get our meals, and meet people.” I smiled at him and he grinned back. “You know, I hear-tell that geese navigate by magnets in their heads. Amazing aren’t they” he answered. Then went on, “when I was a kid my papa wanted me to go out hunting them birds with him. He showed me where to go and how to walk and sit real quiet, but I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t. I was born 9 months and a week after he come home from WW2 and he never once talked about it. Closest he come was when he’d just lower his head and say that no one should ever have to see what he saw. Then he’d just shut up. After he died, I learned he helped liberate a concentration camp in Germany somewhere. Found some medals he’d gotten too. But he never wanted to talk about it.” His gnarled hands were now clutching a spoon as he stirred the liquid in his cup. He continued, “When I couldn’t kill them birds I thought he was terribly disappointed and I ran up to my room and slammed the door shut, embarrassed. He came in after me and sat right there at the edge of my bed and said to me, ‘son, there ain’t no shame in not wanting to kill. You got to go with what your heart tells you is right and wrong. I seen too much killing and I think that it takes a big man to admit he don’t have the stomach for it.’ Then my daddy, he stood up, and get this, he salutes me. Salutes me, turns on his heels and leaves the room. Twenty years later when we buried him, I did the same for him.” His voice was quivering as we were coming into Charleston. “Is that one of the stories you’re going to tell your grandson?" I asked. He looked, up and I could see the tears on his deeply wrinkled face. “Sure is,” he said, “Sure is. Gotta keep people alive” It was late and we said our good-nights and headed down the narrow hallway in opposite directions. The next morning at sunrise I opened the curtains of my sleeping compartment just as we were heading into DC and was greeted with light dancing on the Potomac River. When we stopped at the station, I saw my companion from yesterday evening shuffle slowly on the platform, cane in hand. He glanced up and saw me. I waved and he smiled and tipped his brown hat. Suddenly there was a young man coming toward him—racing on the concrete, arms open wide to embrace him. Even through the train’s thick glass windows I could hear him yell out “Grandpa! I’m so happy you’re here,” as he grabbed his bag, held onto his arm, and both men walked, chattering gleefully, toward the exit. “Gotta keep people alive.” It was 1999. My father was dying of liver cancer. All possibilities had been exhausted and it was estimated he had just a few weeks to live. His care had been given over to me, my husband, our daughter, and hospice. My mother was still alive but her severe handicap precluded much in the way of help with his needs. One day in the midst of confusion and anxiety we realized that he was not at home. I became frantic and called on friends to help me find him in our little town. One of them brought him home within half an hour. “Daddy, why on earth did you go wandering off like that?” I scolded. “It was such a beautiful day just couldn’t resist,” he responded. And so it went for the next few weeks with me questioning his choices and decisions out of anxiety, concern, and ignorance. When he was almost completely bedridden, swollen from the steroids, and unable to eat or drink on his own, he insisted on going to the optometrist in town to get new glasses. I was exasperated. I threw up my hands in a desperate plea to him. “Why? Why?” I stammered ashamed, even as I said the words. He looked at me and took my hand in his and said, “It’s a privilege to be alive and while we’re here we need to remember that and simply live. That means doing all of the mundane necessary things as well as what we enjoy. It’s all—all of it—part of this life.” I took him to the optometrist. They rushed his new glasses. When they arrived he put them on, smiled, and told me, “Ah, everything is more clear now.” Yes, yes it is.  |
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