Stories from the Walk

There is a man waiting in a house in a small town outside a larger than small city.  The city is in a country that has become smaller than its dreams, but the dreams were so great that one would be foolish to have ever thought them to be nearly realized.  The dreams were never the man's but he always believed in the promise of them anyway. 

He believed that if he worked hard he would be rewarded for his pursuit of happiness and that the rewards would be certain.  He believed that, being the third son of his father and born a twin to the second son whom he was so unlike, his pursuit would rescue him from his humble beginnings in a much smaller place than the town in which he now waits.  He does not now believe in long sentences to describe what he believes or in long sentences at all, which is perhaps why he so rarely speaks.

The house in which the man waits is larger than the one in which the man was born, and still larger than the one in which his own son was born.  It is not a mansion of any sort but it is a fine house for a man who began in such a small place.  It is the reward for the man's pursuit.  It is the reward for the man's work repairing airplanes for a company that thought him too expensive and that would complain to the man's labor union about these costs whenever it could.  Since the union had always made sure the man was paid the man always made sure he voted for the union's political candidates.  It had been a good arrangement for the man.

He is not by himself in the fine house but he is nearly alone there. 

His son visits occasionally to inquire about his health.  Happily for the man, they usually do not talk about things of relational concern, although he once asked his son if he knew that the man loved the son.  The son then reminded him of a time at a nursing home two years before when they talked about things they had never discussed.  They both thought death was eminent at the time and worked to clear up matters that were gray between them.  It was one of the few times the son had heard the man express love for him by saying the word, and it meant much to the son.  It was one of the few times the son had done so himself as he was afraid to offer the sentiment before it was offered to him, lest the offering be ill-received.  The two spoke often on the phone when the man could not get his modern television to work as he wished.  But the man had not heard well for many years and so conversations were shouted, not out of anger but out of desperation, although frustration usually crept in.  In any case, shouted conversations never seemed to mean much to either of them because the labor for them both was so great.

There is in the fine house a cat with a silly name. The cat was given to the man by acquaintances who had found the cat abandoned in the old neighborhood where the man once lived.  The cat is fluffy with black and white fur and needs brushing often.  The man cares for the cat and the cat seems usually satisfied to receive the care.  The cat is occasionally less satisfied and will then relieve herself in the man's fine house, which used to upset the man.

A woman who is the man's wife also lives in the fine house but it may not be correct to say that they live together.  Togetherness implies a desired coordination of activity or co-existence, and such a desire could not be said to be true of the man and the woman.  Sometime, years before the son's memory of why, they began to quit talking and expressing between them their hopes and dreams and their affection for one another. They replaced those conversations with shouts (maybe because the man did not hear well, or maybe because they had forgotten or never really learned to talk) and time spent working making the house fine.  It took a lot of work to make the house as fine as they wanted because they lived in a neighborhood above their income.  The appearance of their life was not easy to maintain on garage sale purchases and a second hand Cadillac.  It took work and time to create the life they wanted the world to see. 

The woman struggles greatly to be satisfied with the picture of her life.  She considers the man to be only a marginally acceptable assistant in her efforts and often wished she had selected more carefully when she was young.   Of course, how could she know he would become so quiet?  At least he has done good work under her instruction and fixed or made the things she required to be repaired or constructed.  When he is gone she will have to find a replacement for those services but she doubts the son will do.  He is always reluctant to help which she finds is quite a disappointment.

She often sits in the attached garage or on the porch of the fine house and smokes cigarettes throughout the day and thinks about these things.  She never smokes inside the house because her son told her it made things smell terrible and she does not want her fine house to smell as such in case someone came to visit, although people rarely did.  She works hard to clean the fine house and has fought with the cat over its self-asserted right to pee everywhere.  The cat usually wins and this makes the man smile sometimes.

A few times in recent years the man has surreptitiously smoked in a bathroom in the fine house, and then lied about having done it, which angers the woman greatly.  He isn't supposed to be smoking at all since he has been sick and, in any event, he had effectively quit years before.  He often complains to her that it is hard not to smoke with the smell of it everywhere, even on her.  She thinks him to be either weak or reckless for not being able to resist the addiction she has not yet decided to overcome and often complains to the son about this.  The son never seems to understand her and she certainly does not understand why he can't just agree with her.  She has wanted agreement with anyone for quite some time.

The man is visited by others, with some frequency, but they are paid to do so.  Nurses, social workers, chaplains, all from the hospice company that provided support for him as he waited.  They are very good, in the son's estimation, at providing compassionate support and care.  They are not so good, in his estimation, at understanding that not everyone understands love and compassion very well, even at times such as these, certainly not the woman.

The man has taken to lying about things in recent years, although he was not known as such a man before.  He is embarrassed for his addictions, for his failings and he is unable to understand that there can be any grace for him, much less accept it if it was offered.  When confronted about any such things he will deny them until pressed into admission, usually by the son.  The son is intolerant of the man's falseness, not so much because of the poor character it reveals but because of the difficulties it creates for giving the man care and responding to his needs.  His son complains to the son's wife often that the man seems to have no sense of God's love for him, but the son doesn't know how to convince the man.

The man responds to the son's demands for candor because the son has, in fact, saved his life at least once since all this had began.  Even when the man had first been in the hospital over two years before, anticipating death because then doctors had promised it would come soon, the son had not given up.  In the nursing home to which the man was moved because he had not expired quickly enough at the hospital, the son made choices and took action to rehabilitate the man, despite the knowing looks of nurses and doctors who knew this work would be in vain.

Nonetheless, for reasons the man does not understand, he remembers his son came everyday all day long to rehabilitate the man's limbs, atrophied from too long in a hospital bed.  He recalls dimly the son's claims that the exercises were from his computer or internet and that they had to do them on their own because the insurance wouldn't pay for such treatment to a man expected to die.  In two weeks the man left the nursing home to go to his fine house, walking out the front door under his own strength.  The celebration between the two was muted by so many years of silence.  It was also a bit undone by the collapse of the man's bowels en route to his fine home that necessitated the son to carry the man through a gas station to a restroom in order that the man could clean himself, oxygen tank in tow.  So many people, without offering help, oogled at the spectacle that the man's humiliation, which began when his son wiped his ass in the nursing home, was complete.  He was no longer a man but a mere child to his own son.

Since then he has been mostly at home in his fine house, with a few trips to the emergency room following a pulmonary episode induced by closet smoking.  In those instances his memory is usually diluted to nothing and he does not recall his wife complaining to his son and paramedics that he'd done it again, against her instructions to not smoke in the fine house.  The scene would usually unfold with her shouting these things from just outside the front door of the fine house while smoking, the uneven balance of pressure between the inside of the fine house and the outside drawing smoke from her cigarette into where the paramedics were working to recover the man from his oxygen deprivation.  This is usually maddening for the son.

The son was surprised during one such event by the woman's presence inside the fine house, not smoking.  She and the hospice nurse were standing over the man slumped in his chair, making him comfortable, which is quite the point of hospice, after all.  The nurse advised them that death was eminent although she observed only initial signs of active dying.  The son was distracted by the phrase, as he always had been when used with respect to the man's expected demise.  Weren't we all actively dying?

The choice to be made in that moment over the man's slumped body was whether or not to let the nurse make him comfortable and wait for the end or to suspend hospice care and call for an ambulance to take the man to the emergency room to see if he might be recovered.  The son thought it was of no use to go to the hospital but the woman surprised him by saying she didn't think it was yet his time.  So often had she expressed to the son the death of the man in order to relieve her burden that the son never expected her defense of his life.

The son resents her resentment of the man believing greatly that she used up his life so completely that she owes to the man a commitment of support in his dying season.  He has offered to her the promise that she will receive from the son the same affection and compassion she gives to the man, but the son does not think she understands.

The man knew nothing of these events because so many details of recent years regularly liberated from the confines of his mind, especially those too sad to keep captive.

He wonders a great deal about the woman and the son and why they can't get along better.  He cannot tell if he has done something wrong or if their constant disappointment in one another has nothing to do with him.  He was long the head of their house and should responsible for the family's contentment, but they were both adults able to decide for themselves, after all.  He remembers how much he loved his own mother and how gentle she had been with him when his father was not.  He wishes for this between the woman and the son but did not know how to make it so.

He remembers being able to paint pictures of things and build something from nothing but his imagination, more than just repairing the odds and ends brought home by the woman from garage sales.  He knows this has always impressed others, especially the son, and he wishes that he was able now to do such things again.  He cannot.

The son has, from time to time, asked him about God things the man didn't think he could possibly know or understand.  The son is unable to reconcile with the man's refusal discuss things spiritual the claim the man had once made to a hospital social worker that he was Presbyterian.  The social worker checked that box on the admission form but the son was unable to check that box in his own experience with the man as the man had never made any material expression of faith to him.  The man's reluctance to express to anyone the nature of his relationship with his creator made suspect that there was any such relationship at all.

Now the man has waited for his passing for more than two years, which is a long time to anticipate anything, especially eternity.

As he now waits in his fine house he is unable to think of these things and thinks only of the pain of his next labored breath and whether or not the cat needs brushing again.

copyright 2011 Michael Humphrey