You Just Don't Know... You Know?

Casting about...

Well then, here's something:

I've already written recently, about my current bout of what I call 'The Death Flu'.  This flu leaves me feeling paper-thin and hypothetical most of the time, and keenly aware of the transience  of... well, everything, really.  But while this particular go-round of Death Flu seems the worst I can recall, it's far from the first experience I've had with the imponderable task of squarely facing the inevitable.  My inevitable.  End.

A few years ago, for instance, I sought out books that purported to be about death.  One was a short novel, 'Being Dead', which gave a nod of sorts to the grave topic in the title, but didn't seem to satisfy what I thought of then as my perverse curiosity.  I also bought a more grounded, medically-slanted volume, "How We Die', in which the author took us through the various common denouements we modern humans face when our little individual dramas have come to its end.  At first, I found the book bracingly informative, but it still left me feeling dissatisfied by the time I'd reached the end.

I also somehow stumbled on a set of interviews with men and women spending their last days in hospice care.  These were people whose terminal conditions hadn't impaired their intelligence or their ability -- and willingness -- to communicate what it was like, for them, simply to wait to make their exit.  Some interviewees cited Elizabeth Kubler-Ross' classic 'On Death and Dying', which of course I'd read many years ago.  (I also kept a copy of Ernst Becker's 'The Denial of Death' on my bedside must-read pile for more than ten years before I could force myself to open it and get past the first sixty pages, so upset was I by Becker's own premature death, well before he turned 50) But the interview that struck me as most revelatory wasgiven by a woman whose life had been particularly successful, in material and professional terms.

She had held prominent positions in her chosen field of work.  She had traveled, and had been financially secure in her own right.  While I don't recall specifics about her personal life, there was no sense that this was a person who'd suffered deep disappointments or striking injustices.  Many would call her life a resounding success.

But, from her bed in the hospice, she said that, looking back over all the many achievements and activities that had punctuated her active existence, and surveying all of it from what one might consider the ultimate perspective, she really wasn't sure of her major triumph -- what was the best thing she'd ever done.  As she waited for her ending to begin, she said she realized that, quite possibly, the finest or most significant act of her life had been something that, when it took place, seemed negligible at best.  Saying a warm hello to someone she passed on the street.  Letting the person standing next to her get on the elevator first.  Helping the neighbor shovel the walk.  Complimenting the cashier on her bracelet.  And so on.  Any of a myriad of simple acts might well have been the one that, in unexpected ways, had profoundly impacted the life of another human being.

I've always treasured this gift this woman was able to share, at the point when one might expect she had nothing left to give, besides perhaps her bedroom slippers and a bathrobe she wouldn't need anymore.  And every once in a while, the perspective she provided seems an appropriate angle from which to look at my own life.  To wit...

A week after my pacemaker surgery, I was commuting, by public transportation, from my home in South Orange, to New Brunswick, and the church where John is Director of Music.  For the previous seven days, I'd been pretty much house-bound.  I'd been prohibited from driving for the first week. Plus the hospital had given me a much-Xeroxed list of other prohibitions I was urged to observe -- no reaching, no lifting, limitations on how much I could carry with my left arm.  All these concerns were still very much on my mind, when I climbed onto the #31 bus, at Dover Street, for the four-mile trip to Newark Penn Station, and the New Brunswick train.

I wax surprised, really, at how briskly I had been able to walk the four long blocks to the bus stop, without feeling at all winded.  Of course, I was keenly aware of my heart beat -- or, more precisely, the beating of my heart that was being prompted by the odd lumpy thing lodged high on the left side of my chest, just below my clavicle.  I figured this unexpected physical resilience was just the simple joy of being out of the house, and on my way to meet with people I know care about me.

But none of those people would be on this bus.  And many other people would be.  So I needed to be more careful than usual.  For instance, I usually sit in a seat on the right side of the bus, so my left arm is free for writing or drawing.  But that day, I sat on the other side of the aisle, to keep my left side sheltered from unexpected jolts or bumps.  I looked out the window, watching Newark go by, and thinking about this recent medical event -- heart surgery, no less -- and how shaken it had left me.

The bus filled quickly, in spite of the mild weather.  School had let out hours before, and there were still lots of rowdy kids needing to get from one part of Newark to another.  Working men and women climbed aboard, just done for the day.  Mothers shepherded children.  Men arguing loudly about basketball made their way to the back.

There were only two seats left -- the one right beside me, and the one directly behind it, on the aisle -- when a great clot of folks got on, and a woman in a faded magenta trench coat worked her determined way through the crush, clutching a curtain rod and a big flat postal box in one hand, while guiding a small child ahead of her by the other.   Just by eye contact, we agreed that the child would sit in the seat beside me.  I also reached over, and gestured that the woman should let me hold her other things as well.  She handed them to me, then told the child that she would be right back, that she was just going to pay the fare.  She worked her way upstream, like a short pink icebreaker, creating a channel among human bergs reluctant to shift.

The child (I couldn't tell if I was sitting next to a boy or a girl) was wearing a thin, unlined grey parka with the hood pulled as far forward as it would go.  All I could see, face-wise, was the white paper stem of a hard candy lollipop, bobbing up and down like a little thermometer in the child's mouth.  The kid wore a pair of black knit gloves, so new the fingers were still flat and creased.  And there was the big, brand-new coloring book to hold onto.  It was wrapped in clear plastic. with a set of crayons blister-packed on the cover.  Maybe because I'm the oldest of seven, or because I know how suddenly even a lumbering bus can jerk and bump, I put my right arm across the back of the seat we shared, and got a tiny grip on the sleeve of that thin jacket.  Just in case.

The woman came shoving back, but made no indication that she needed to sit with this little child.  She took the seat behind.  The bus continued on its lumbering way.  At one point, the child made a kind of shrugging gesture -- my grip on the jacket, was that it?  Again, that little movement, without a sound.  So I let go, carefully withdrew my arm, and lay it across the back of the seat for a few moments.  Then, when the bus came to one of its typical sudden stops, and the child slid forward just a bit, I dropped my arm back down again, determined to be able to act as a kind of human safety belt, if the ride got too rough.  The bus started again, and the child leaned back.

We were halfway through the commute -- and were just passing the hospital where, just the week before, my chest had been slit open and my heart had been threaded with copper wires  -- the kid finished the lollipop.  Let go of the coloring book just a bit, to pull out and examine the business end of the sucker, which had been chewed pretty much bare.  Again without a sound, I made a gesture with my right hand, offering to take this no-longer-useful bit of trash, but evidently the decision was that more sweetness could be still extracted, and the stem went back into the mouth I couldn't see, hidden inside the grey hood.  The seams were sewn in black.

Roll and stop.  Stop and go.  Move and slow down, then stop and go again.  The usual rhythms of a bus, warmed with body heat, and commuting through city traffic.  Slowly, the child began to relax, leaning into me, back against my arm.  No protest.  Warm and calm.  I could feel the breathing.   Steady.  Even.  Deep and slowing. 

I glanced over my shoulder at the woman in pink.  She nodded, and mouthed 'Sleeping'.

All of  sudden, my eyes began to sting, and I had to wipe my face.  Because here I was, a man whose heart was literally broken, and who felt so vulnerable and so worthless, with a little child lying against his side, feeling safe and secure enough against a stranger's arm, to fall asleep.  I thought of that generous dying woman, who hadn't been afraid to admit that she really couldn't tell, in her own life, what the most important thing had been.  And what if, for me, it's this, I wondered?  What if it's just giving a little kid, with brand-new gloves and a big coloring book, comfort and security enough to be able to nap, on a half-hour bus ride that would probably be forgotten, within... what, half an hour?

My seat-mate turned out to be a little boy.  While most of the passengers were loudly disembarking at Broad and Market Streets, he woke, and then looked up at me, with a round face as placid as a sweet perfect pancake.  Dark eyes.  His mom (? Aunt?  Sister?  Babysitter?  Kidnapper?) again made no move to rearrange the seating.  The boy showed me his coloring book.  I pointed out the colors, in my limited Spanish.  He coolly corrected me, in perfect English.  When we reached the train station, the lady in pink took the boys' left hand, he looked up and gave me his right, and we both swung him from the bottom step of the bus, and onto the sidewalk.  I returned the mailing box and the curtain rod.  They went their way.  I went mine.

Not only what is the most important thing I do, but also, when can I do it?  When I'm hale and vain of my strength, or when I'm keenly alert to my state of damage, to my brokenness?  I so desperately crave a sense of basic value, that I project the act of redemption I seek onto scraps of plastic rescued from the street.  How stunning to me then, how graceful, to feel a spate of delicious value welling up, just because a little boy, on a warm, crowded bus, has leaned back against my arm, and fallen asleep.


©   2012       Walter Zimmerman