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A Long Way to Go
The following is a “true” story. Well, about as true as memory can grant, but I give that cheat willingly to express it.
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“Care is suffering.”
I gawked at the old man standing idly by the road, his bald pate bobbling and gaggling at the young man before him, with astonished eyes. This man, well, I could describe him at this time but I would never even in my most peotic efforts do him justice. The sad thing is I only realize this now.
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I’d spent that summer. Trying to get a grasp of life - seventeen, over sexed ander under intoxicated with life due to a happy coincidence of the shallowness of teenage years and the fact I looked and talked more than a good game. An apprentice con man easily finding marks amongst a crowded carnival could hardly help themselves but to “ooo!” and “ahhh!” at my conquests. Little did I know the hurt and trouble I would cause.
That trouble would have been a great disappointment to the old man, a man who just had LIFE oozing from his words and pores. It wasn’t always good life either. Don’t get me wrong, I had heard the stories from my father of carrying granddad home from the bar many a night when my father was very young, but this was the way of things then. Times were hard. Society didn’t medicalize everything like in our present cultural constant need to be involved in issues we had no right to be sticking our collective noses in. A man didn’t “abuse alcohol.” He was just “having some problems” and the lucky ones came through it fine as my grandfather did. Trust me, now I know what he was feeling as my father did then. There were dark times as all families – all people – have – but there was just too much light in this old man to let those be the memories that stuck to him. Oh! What granddad held inside that prodigious mind! He had experienced so many things and had so much to say in just a gesture or a nod. You got the feel that here was a person that caused the ancients to worship their ancestors as gods, but maybe every grandson thinks this about their grandfather at some time. I like to think this is the case.
Back to the past: I had spent many long days on my weekends helping my father take care of his father’s lands, humble as they were. Two cherry trees, a pear tree and a sizable garden behind the garage with a decent sized city yard around it to boot. Granddad had taken ill and couldn’t putter around the yard as we so often saw him doing, sharing his wisdom to us children wrapped in our short attention span theatre that was life at the time. God! I wish I could remember so many things he said now … That’s a moot point … maybe.
By the time the summer had finally rolled around and gazed its mischievous eyes into my teenage heart, I had spent two years working this yard and granddad was in a sorry state. His diseases had names – names I shudder to think of seeing their affects – the strong, silent man was reduced to a spasming dodderer, who his own son would not let the grandkids spend too much time with for fear of what his mind sick sire would do in their presence. Just thinking of those times turns my heart black and drips a venomous ichor through my veins. Misplaced hatred for being denied the presence of someone I love. What right did my father have to deny us the presence and play of the man who meant so much to us? I couldn’t fathom it then, but now …
Granddad always tried to pay me, my father or my brother for the yard work, something that was normally politely refused. If accepted, it was given to my grandmother out of his sight and to our knowledge out of his knowing. This was the man who taught us how to pick cherries without disturbing the birds and pears, ripe and delicious. He showed us and my father what we needed to know to tend the earth and keep a small place no matter where we lived that was green and bounteous, to remind us that we are part of something bigger and how to work within it. A gift, sadly, I have not used, but maybe you will see why.
Late one evening I had walked outside because of the usual angst and restraint the young soul feels indoors … and also because I wanted to sneak a cigarette without my parents knowing. I walked out the back door first in the dull orange and purples of a recent glooming sunset when I heard a noise coming from the front of the house. Bored and mildly curious I walked around front leaving my three sisters, my brother and parents to what ever entertainment they chose to pursue.
I noted the fine springy feel of the healthy summer grass beneath my bare feet as I walked and fingered the cigarette in my short’s pocket lustily thinking I was going to put one over on the old man and stared absently at the fading sunset rays. I had almost walked right into the figure by the mailbox which is why the words more than startled me.
“Care is suffering.”
I gawked. I stared. Dumbfounded and awkward I looked at the old man’s familiar features before me. How the hell? I mean what was he doing here? I glanced quickly around for my father and mother, but could tell by the faint sounds of the television that they were still behind a closed door inside. The garage door was firmly shut and no one stood in the twilight besides me and this slowly dying man.
He smiled and gestured towards the mailbox. He made what seemed a feeble attempt to start an embrace, but the shaking overtook him and he grasped himself tightly in a vain hope to have it stop just for a moment. It didn’t. A tear appeared beneath a wrinkled eye and stuck there refusing to fall as he stared at a shocked and silent grandson. He nodded, smiling, and waddled his way back up the street gesturing back to the mailbox without another word. I watched in stunned silence as my hand of its own accord dropped the metal door of the mailbox and reached inside.
An envelope lay in my grasp and I retrieved it still not realizing what was going on. Inside were several large bills that I would later realize was the sum payment for two ears of yard work. I stared at the old man as he walked. He was Eighty-eight years on this earth and it was ten miles to his house. Sick as he was, this icon of the family who always paid and always followed his conscience even when the result may not have been favorable. He had walked ten miles in his condition to do what he thought was right because care, or love, is suffering.
I broke my trance and quickly hurried to my car that, incidentally, father and granddad helped me rebuild body and soul. I tried to calmly start it and catch him subtlely but I fear I peeled out after him and caused a bit of trouble for myself later when I lied (very poorly) about what I went to do. I couldn’t let him walk back. Though he quietly entered the car and breathed the sigh of the over tired as he took a seat next to me, I feel by not letting him complete that walk back, I’d taken something from him. Throughout the trip back to my granddad’s house, not a word was spoken. There were glances and smiles and a feeling of such oneness and connection that words are envious to describe, but not one fell from either of our lips.
I pulled up to the front of the house and his shaking hand gestured me to stop at the foot of the driveway. His palsied hand opened the door and before he trudged back to his home of sixty years he turned to me with the smile and tear still stuck on his face like the fondest memory and resting his hands upon the open window he said simply:
“Remember.”
I watched him struggle up his steps and into the house without a backward glance and opened my door to stand and see the screen door swing shut behind him as the worried trills of my grandmother cascaded from behind it. I noticed in a languid and surreal way the two large cherry trees as the last orange faded to muted purples and blues in its branches over the house. I felt a sudden twinge of worry. If I’d have known then that this would be the last time I would see my grandfather …
Often, I think back to this. At times when I question my choices, decisions even at times when I have questioned my right to be among the breathing population of this world for the evils I have done or have experienced at the hands of others – most of whom I have cared deeply for if not loved, I go back to a day when a dying man stood before me in a driveway and showed me something that would cause me more pain than anything imaginable.
And at the same more joy than I believe any human capable of feeling. It’s suffering I will gladly and always accept.
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