Live Well

 “You can go in now” It felt as though the words had come from inside me, like a thought instead of a sound. Time has a nearly infinite elasticity when you are waiting for something as rare as your last moments with someone you love and time for me had stretched to the point my consciousness had slipped through. Then the nurse stepped into my peripheral vision as I sat on the floor in the hallway. Her face was filled with compassion and graced with a gentle smile. She held her hand out towards the open door as if to welcome me. I could go in now. So I gathered my self together.

My Dad seemed to be asleep. I quietly took my place beside him and watched the machines do their work. And I watched the clock. Time on this side of the wall was much different. There is nothing as horrifying as having one irreplaceable second after another stripped away from you as the thin red hand on a clock circles. Not when your are just old enough to know what death is and not old enough help anyone do it. “Why are you in such a hurry?” my father asked. With this simple question juxtaposed with the horror I felt in our time's passage I was instantly transported back to another night.

My Dad had just gotten home from another emergency trip to the hospital. He cornered me in my bedroom and accused me of hearing his cries of pain and ignoring them. He said I wanted him dead. He was wrong. I wanted him to be well again. I wanted to play chess again. I wanted to go shooting again. I wanted to go fishing. I wanted to hear him read Shakespeare out loud. I wanted to talk about science. I wanted to have the peace, and safety, and completeness of having my Dad by my side. There was so much I wanted to say but all I could offer him in this moment was silence, and innocence. Eventually he left me alone in my room with all of that to want and no one to hold. But, I was four years older and had gained enough experience to meet what I felt was a harsh accusation with the simple truth. “I'm only supposed to be in here twenty minutes at a time.” Just then the same nurse came in the room with a fresh blanket saying “Take all the time you need.” And with those simple and profound words the spell was broken, my horror faded and my Dad and I passed a couple of hours talking easily to one another until he was too tired to go on and I left him to sleep.

His question and my reaction to it has clung to my life for the three decades since his death. It devoured me slowly and nearly completely. After my Mother's death the loss of her part of my Father's story made the memories of all the bad times more poignant and predominant. Her narrative had sweetness and memories of light my Dad had inside him. Without that point of view to help guide me I sank into the evil of the wretched, premature end of someone I love and need. Loss had become part of how I viewed my world to the point there was no taste, no scent, no sound of anything I once held dear. There was only longing and anger. Grief was like a filter on a camera lens, unnoticeable except for the resulting image; skewed reality. Finally, during a reliving of my experience in the hospital I realized what was happening, that this pain was literally killing me and with the help of people I love I found a way out of the spiral.

This week I have come to say farewell the third man I have loved the way you should love a Father, Dr. Ulysses Gonzalez. He was a great man that lead a long life and died surrounded by Family. I will miss him very much, many people will, and his death should not be mourned but life without him will be. My role in the ceremonies is singular, to be here when my Wife needs me. The quiet within this simple duty has offered me a precious moment of clarity. My Dad was really hoping to hear that I had friends waiting for me. He wanted to hear that I had something important to do or something fun. That I had to go to work to help support the Family. He wanted to hear that the things were in place that would give my life meaning and joy. He wanted to hear that he had accomplished something very important by creating a whole person strong enough to carry on with out him. In this moment I miss him more than ever, and more than ever at peace with his absence.

I see now that having a great number of days in my life may not offer me a chance to pass from this life with all conflicts resolved and a loving legacy. The quantity of my days is not what I can control, my only chance is what I do with the time I have left. If I want to die well I must live well. I must work joyfully to create the world I want and accept the world that exists. I must guard the health of my body, and my mind, and my soul. I want to teach Ella how to play chess. I want be a friend to as many people as I can. I must paint. I want to laugh, a lot. I want to hear every word my Wife and Daughter have to say and take them to heart and make them part of me. I must learn to offer all my thoughts as expression of joy. Most of all I must learn to face my fear without anger as a shield, because when death comes I want to go smiling.  

The Blessings

 I had passed it every day on my way home, at the entrance ramp at the beginning of Ellington Parkway just North of downtown Nashville, a simple cross made of a perforated steel channel, ubiquitous in construction, known as unistrut. It is on the public right of way adjacent to one of Nashville low cost housing projects and conjures many images juxtaposed as it is against the poorly maintained apartment buildings that have sheltered people suffering from despair and sickness for decades. This is just one of hundreds of such monuments to highway deaths I have seen on roads here in the South. I try to take a moment to realize the meaning of loss these crosses represent and honor the public, if anonymous, display of grief.

I nearly sideswiped the car beside me. As tried to merge onto Ellington I found the gray cross now completely covered in purple, red, and pink silk flowers. For years I had no evidence that it had ever been touched by human hands. The dour specter now seemed to be singing, brought to life by this human kindness. But the song faded. As the weeks went by the flowers tuned to white from the Sun. As the Months passed they turned as gray as the steel. And as Winter came and went the flowers fell away. Last year's flood washed away the cross bar where once hung memory and solace. I wonder, were the flowers a commemoration of the passing of the soul this cross represented. Where they in honor of the person who had left it there years before, now gone to be with the one they so loved. Did the memories of the one they lost fade away, or did they become to painful to bare any longer. I will never know. The Cross is silent.

***

It is a blessing, that the dead are always faithful. Their deeds now recounted and numbered and relived by those that still have dreams and needs of their own. The living search that past for the kindness they need today and with what they find they embody the souls of the absent and form a cradle for their remembrance. It is a blessing for the dead that their lives now flow not with the revolutions of our Earth but the revelations of our hearts.

It is a blessing for the living to always be faithful. To guard your thoughts and words and deeds as you would eternity. To always act in the best interest of those that love you. My Father told me, when I was a child, that if something is so important to you that so foremost in your mind that you can say it when you see a falling star that that wish will come true. I will try to say “ I will earn my daughters faith in me.” before the light can die.

Painted Ponies

I had watched them for several years and didn’t think much of it; a boy riding a paint pony with his father walking besides the two holding the lead line of the halter. I just thought the Father was a little over protective since the child was nearly my age judging from his height. It wasn’t until the rider’s feet hung half way between the pony’s belly and the ground that I became concerned. At first I thought my parents were angry when I asked if the teenager was too big to be riding him. “You just don’t need to worry yourself about that pony. We should all be so well taken care of.” It was a double team. “They don’t go that far. It’s barely a mile to the lake from their place. Besides he barely weighs a hundred pounds!” It wasn’t anger though; it was more like fear, more like dread. There was something else, something they wouldn’t tell, or couldn’t tell me. It got quiet at the dinner table after that. They didn’t look at me. They didn't look at each other.

Now they had a element of mystery for me. I stationed myself in the boat at the north end of our lake where they passed by every Saturday and Sunday and I could observe. On Sunday they were like clockwork, one PM, after church. The Father and Son dressed alike -matching actually - khakis, work boots, flannel shirts and St. Louis Cardinals baseball caps. They had the same sandy brown hair. They wore matching eyeglasses.  But the Boy’s clothes fit differently. His shirt was untucked and oversized and his neck and wrists swam in their openings.  He was emaciated. His head wobbled as the pony walked and he leaned to one side. But they smiled, always, Father and Son the same smile. The paint was fat and slick and spotless, and if ponies could smile I am sure he would have too.

***

My half Arabian gelding, Banner, knew what was about to happen. The pavement dead ended into a long abandoned coal company road and the gravel that would harm his hooves had long ago washed away.  I shortened the stirrups on the old hunt seat English saddle to nearly Jockey length and gathered the reins in either hand short and tight as he strained in anticipation. My barely audible verbal click was the downbeat. He coiled into a half rear and leapt down the road. A hundred yards flashed by before I could catch my next breath and this was punctuated by the impact of landing as he jumped a mud puddle. Then we came to the stretch where he always turned on that extra gear he had. Standing in a tight crouch with my head beside Banners neck I was fixed in the space we shared except for my hands, now in front of me, moved forward and back as each stride lengthed. His mane whipped my face and the world was a swirl of light and early autumn’s first falling leaves. Four beats and silence. Four beats and silence. In the silence, when all four hooves were off the ground, we were flying.
Banner pranced in a hard trot for half the trip home. He was never one to bolt for the barn, but the weather was cool and it took him a while to relax after all the excitement. He finally slowed to a walk as we turned down Parklane which would take us home.  This is where I always saw the happy trio, as I had come to think of them and I realize I had not seen them in weeks. I had never spoken to them but we always waved . It was too cold to spray Banner with the hose , which he loved when it was warm, so I took extra time to walk him until all the sweat had dryed where the saddle pad had been. His winter coat was already coming in and brushing out the salt and the mud that had splashed all over him from our run worked up a sweat of my own. I turned him loose to rejoin his pasture mates and immediately he laid down and rolled in his usual spot in the middle of the pasture. All the brushing was erased in an instant but that's part of the bargain, brushing your horse after a ride is not optional. I kissed my Mom on the cheek and grabbed a fried chicken leg and a tall glass of milk from the refrigerator. We sat at the kitchen table as I talked about my ride, and school, and college the next fall. "you know mom I haven't seen those two and that little paint lately, have you?" She turned white, visibly shaken. She took my glass and plate and turned to rinse them in the sink. She looked out the window as she methodically wiped the plate dry. “He died two nights ago. I was working in the emergency room when they brought him in. He.." She couldn't finish the sentence. "You never get used to seeing the children go, especially like that. It's just not right."

***

Horses are spiritual beings. They are the substance of dreams. You can learn a lot about justice by spending time in their company as well. Foremost, don't expect too much from it, at least not all at once. The same type of noble beast would carry the boy and I down the same path for just a little while. These horses bound us to our families in joy and sorrow and gave us dreams of our own. He would leave his horse with the living and I would leave mine to go to college. I would get to drive cars. I would learn to make beautiful things. I would kiss girls.

It wasn’t until my own little girl was born that I learned my Mother had taken thalidomide during pregnancy. For her, to have healthy children was it’s own spiritual burden. When you are standing in the warmth and sunshine it is easy to see the grace of God to be as wide as an ocean. But when you see the pain of others you realize that grace has a border as hard and clear as the edge of a razor. You know what side of the line you are on today. You know the line will be drawn anew tomorrow. So In the morning I will kiss my perfect, healthy daughter awake. I will try to be a good father, and pay my debt to painted ponies.