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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.”  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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