What We Talk About When We Talk

The doctor says he has recently returned from a trip to Fiji, where he volunteered in a clinic when he was not diving in the clear ocean water. He says the medical care and facilities in Fiji are terrible, saddening. "Isn't it frustrating," I say, "to know that so many people could be helped with only a modicum of decent care?" He says that, yes, it is frustrating, and he says that the patient he thinks of the most is a 17-year-old girl who has been diagnosed with leukemia, but who will die soon because she cannot get chemotherapy. "After diagnosis, a person usually dies within 2 months without treatment," he says. "They are basically just waiting for her to die."

When my 15 minutes are over, after I have been probed, prodded, and pumped, after my test results are interpreted and explained, I leave the doctor's office reassured that I have more than a few good years remaining--at least unless I "get hit by a truck on the way home," the doctor says. He's a realist and has seen such things happen, I gather.

The morning air is hot as I head home, taking the long way and driving by my high school, through a couple of neighborhoods I have not seen in many years. Though I think about the young girl in Fiji, my drive is comfortable, and I am anticipating my flight to Portland this afternoon. From PDX I will drive north toward Seattle where I plan to spend some time with my oldest son, and a day later descend to Portland for a visit with a sister, a niece, and Maya the Amazing Basset Hound. Leaving the old neighborhood I stop at a stoplight and watch automobiles turn in front of me. In one, a white pickup truck, a young man leans part way out his open window with his cellular phone pushed against his face. Just as my light turns green I hear him say loudly, "Go to hell and die, you fucking bitch." I wonder who is having a worse day: him, or the person he is speaking to.

*

The flight is fine, and at PDX I find that Hertz has reserved a Chevy Colbalt just for me. Trusting the wonders of modern marketing, I anticipated that the car would have an auxiliary jack for my iPod, and I am free to enjoy several hours of uninterrupted music, stopping only once at exit 39 on Interstate 5 for a drink at McDonald's. Arriving at my destination just south of Seattle, I enjoy 2 cold Coronas with my son and a portion of my wife's family, and the next morning awake to cool, clean air and a couple acres of green trees. Late that afternoon, after a good day of conversation and dining, my iPod, the Colbalt, and I head south, and I successfully navigate thorough rain and dark to my next destination just south of Portland, where Maya and her human family greet me with kisses. The 2 days are pleasant. The weather is good.

Today, on a day good for such things, I accompany my sister to her church, where people sing, pray, and seek comfort. I also am asked if I am single, if I am a church-goer at home, and if I like Oregon. These are easy questions to answer, and I do. The pastor, who is enduring his own personal challenges, reads as though he has read poetry aloud; he reminds me of Gallway Kinnell, even Robert Bly. Part of his reading today is of Moses, of Moses' time beyond the wilderness where he encounters the burning bush. As the pastor speaks, I think of the story of Gilgamesh, which I've recently read on my friend Shawn's recommendation. Gilgamesh, too, seemed to go beyond wilderness in his quest, losing and finding much along the way.

I think of places I have been, those places beyond where I intended to go, and then think of what I have found there. The pastor also speaks of how, to paraphrase, we often find what we need in places where we believe we will find nothing.

*

After brief goodbyes to my sister and the Colbalt, I board the flight home and assume my aisle seat toward the front of the plane. The plane fills until, finally, a woman sits in the middle seat next to me. I boarded in group A, but, because she lost her boarding pass, she was relegated to group C. Still, she secures a seat near the exit. During takeoff, we trade pleasantries, brief details about where we have been and where we are going. She tells me that her husband died a few weeks ago, and she has been staying with her daughter and is now on her way home for the first time, where she will finally have to face a quiet house in which for over 20 years she cared for her husband who first had Parkinson's, then Alzheimer's. In the next hour she will show me a photograph of her husband from 1984, when he worked with the Los Angeles summer Olympics. The man I see appears vibrant and happy; his thick dark hair has as single white streak down the middle. She then shows me a picture taken of him several years ago, and she points out how different he looks though I can see his eyes are not the same eyes, the hair entirely white. "I cared for him with no help," she will tell me. She will also describe how, even when he could not speak, she continued talking to him, reading to him.

"You are easy to talk to," she says, and I want to tell her that I really am not, that others find me impatient. "You'll have to tell your wife about the old woman who talked to you on the plane," she will say more than once. As with other, similar encounters, I do not know what she wants from me, so I let her talk, and she tells me other things. Before flying to Portland, she had visited her sister in El Paso, Texas, because that sister will soon be dead, too. And she tells me that, 5 years ago, her daughter's husband died at the age of 44 while exercising. He had been a Marine, was in good shape, and died suddenly. I suddenly can't help but think that my doctor has been keeping something from me, which is why he mentioned getting hit by a truck.

There are other, more mundane things: the other daughters; the unmarried grandson; the travels to Portugal and Spain just after her husband became ill; the daughter who lives in South Lake Tahoe and likes to snowboard after years of surfing in Southern California; the 17 years of working with first and second graders, experience that, she said, prepared her to care for her husband.

*

And later when I am home, the trip's events and nonevents sorting and sequencing themselves in my memory, the person I think of most is the man yelling into his cell phone as I drove home from the doctor.