My parents took me to the doctor for an emergency examination while I was in kindergarten. They had a sense of urgency that, at five years old, I had never seen before. Our family physician wrote a prescription and sent us home. I remember thinking nothing of it until I was spoon-fed this foul mixture, and I gagged before swallowing it. My folks also woke me in the middle of the night to give me the same elixir once more.
Youth and the fog of memory cloud one’s perspective and make the image in the rearview mirror of the mind fuzzy. I needed the medicine, yet I wasn’t sick. Back in 1968, things were a lot different from what they are today. I didn’t even have a pediatrician. But the fact remains that something had given my parents and the doctor a scare.
A young girl in my class had died of viral meningitis.
She passed away at five years old, and it still troubles me. I do not remember her name or even her face. Perhaps as I write this, there is a mother and father who pause each day to recall her laugh, gaze at her photo, and shed a tear forty years later. By now, they are elderly. Perhaps they are grandparents. Yet how could they forget her?
My life and that of the little girl crossed at one point. Though the thread connecting us was thin, there was indeed a portion of the fabric of space-time in which we shared a common patch of Earth and moved along a collective path toward maturation. Sadly, she did not make it any further.
To a greater degree, her parents traveled along that same path and stood at the edge of the plane of existence I had shared with their daughter. Is the tiny ripple of one youthful life great enough to cause a wave of emotion powerful enough to continue to intrigue a grown man?
Four decades have passed, and I still think about my late classmate. She has the effect of keeping me focused, reminding me that my life is supposed to have significance. I will explain.
My cynicism has caused me to question my life’s purpose. I’ve rejected the idea that destiny and fate have any sort of influence over me. Yet, looking back, I see how past events have led me to where I am today, and it sometimes feels like fate.
The players who’ve accompanied me on my journey thus far—including family, friends, teachers, coworkers, and some victims I’ve encountered during my years in law enforcement—have all contributed bits and snippets of truth and awareness that occur to me only when I cast off the cloak of skepticism and become open to the charms of serendipity.
I want to remember this young girl from elementary school. I can still see where she sat in class and the back of her head. With her brown hair gathered into pigtails, she sat upright during those first days of school and listened to Mrs. Sisti teach us the ABCs. Is it fair that I made it this far in life and she did not? What does it mean when a child dies? How do I justify the additional fifty-six years of life I have been fortunate enough to receive simply because I did not get sick?
My conscience cannot easily reconcile transience, the algebra of survival, and cosmic disproportion. For this reason, I am compelled to assess my endurance and make good on an unearthed vow evoked by introspection and an unadulterated scrutiny of what I deem to be providence. Why do I live? How am I so fortunate? And what is the toll for continuing along this thoroughfare—this life?
For the sake of so many who came before me, including this girl of whom I write, I will endeavor to be a good person. My goal shall be to contribute something to the rest of us. Each day, I give a bit more, I think, as I follow a new thread I’ve discovered with my eyes wide open and my mind cleared of wretched disbelief.
My children have now surpassed the young girl in age, and hopefully, God forbid, I will never mourn as her parents have. This girl, this fleeting life, still teaches, though her responsibility was never to die but to grow.
There is a photograph buried in an archive of snapshots and Polaroids at my dad’s house. Captured on paper somewhere in these collections is an image of me in kindergarten. I remember when the class portrait was taken. Her mom and dad no longer brought her to school by then, and she never hung her finger paintings in the hallway with the rest of us for open-school night.
I intend to dig that picture out of the drawer where I store memorabilia. The will is there, but not the effort. Perhaps I will find it one day when I sit back and consider my life and how I got here. Sometimes, whenever I recall everyone I have known over the years, a little girl nudges me and reminds me that she once lived and that she mattered in this world.
Her parents should know that a new filament has been cast across the dimensions between life and death, and their child continues to weave herself into the cloth of someone else’s being. I shall secure this lifeline offered to me by my classmate and keep myself grounded in the belief that I will justify my existence and fulfill my obligations.
Decades ago, a mom and dad lost their daughter. This man, once a boy in her kindergarten class, will never forget her.
Kindergarten physician viral meningitis parents space-time classmate life journey serendipity
