
All which I thought I knew about my father was altered in the final days of his life. I believed, correctly so, that he was a strong, powerful man, both physically and in stature; but; I was also exposed to his profound spirituality.
My
parents took me to the doctor for an emergency examination while I was in
kindergarten. They had a sense of urgency which, 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. Also, my folks woke me in the middle of the night
to give me this same elixir once more.
Youth
and the fog of memory cloud one’s perspective and make the image in the rear-view
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 gave 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’s mother and a 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 was
thin which had connected us, there was indeed a portion of the fabric of
space-time where we had shared a common patch of Earth and moved along a collective
path toward maturation. Though, sadly, she did not make it any further.
To
a greater degree, her parents towed the same line, and they stood at the edge
of that plane of existence, which I had shared with their daughter. Is a tiny
ripple of one youthful life so great as 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, as my life is supposed to have significance. I
will explain.
My
cynicism has caused me to question my life’s purpose. I’ve derailed the
concepts of destiny and fate, having any sort of influence over me. Looking
back, I see how past events have led me to where I am today, and it feels like
fate.
The
players who’ve accompanied me on my journey thus far, including, family,
friends, teachers, co-workers, and some victims I’ve encountered during my
years in law enforcement, have all contributed bits and snippets of truth and
awareness which only occurs to me when I cast off the cloak of skepticism and
become open to the charms of serendipity.
I
want to recollect this fated young girl back in elementary school. I can still
see where she sat in class and the back of her head. With her brown hair
clasped together to form pig tails, she sat upright in those first days of
school and listened Mrs. Sisti teach us the ABCs. Is it fair that I made it
this far in life and not her? What does it mean when a child dies? How do I
validate my additional fifty-six years of breathing for being lucky enough to
not get sick?
My
conscience cannot handle transience, the algebra of survival, and cosmic
disproportion. For this reason, I am compelled to assess my endurance, to make
good on an unearthed vow evoked by my introspection and 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 before me, and 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 string I’ve
discovered with my eyes wide open and my mind cleared of wretched disbelief.
My
children have passed the young girl in age; and, hopefully, I will never mourn,
God forbid, as her parents do to this day. 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 in one of these collections is an image of me in kindergarten.
I remember when the class portrait was taken. Her mom and dad no longer took
her to school by then; and, she never hanged 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
everybody that I knew over the years, a little girl nudges me and reminds me
she had once lived and that she had 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 with the concept that I will justify my existence and
fulfill my obligations.
Decades
ago, a mom and dad lost their daughter. This man, once boy in her kindergarten
class, will never forget her.
On December 20, 2006, I woke up at around five o’clock in
the morning, one hour before I typically rose, and did something I never do
that early in the day. I checked my e-mail. My inbox contained a message from a
woman whom I only knew casually through my best friend and former partner in
the police department. Her name is Denise, and my friend Stephen hired her to
work in the shop he owned. I helped at his store, fixing his computers and
doing some counter work with the customers. Denise and I often talked and joked
when we were there together, but our relationship was strictly professional, as
we were both married and had families. Besides, she was Stephen’s friend from
childhood.
I was curious to see a message from Denise, but not shocked. I gave her the
address, not one that I use for personal e-mails, but an e-mail address I
give to people I am iffy about. The subject line caught my attention,
though.
Urgent! Please read!
It wasn’t spam, and I didn’t think she would hit me up with some sort of
business scheme; but, for the life of me, I couldn’t think of a single issue
where I’d need to speak to her in a hurry.
Stephen closed his shop up a few months earlier. Business in the shipping and
receiving world was bad, especially since he had to compete with FedEx and UPS.
Cutting his losses, he sold collectibles on eBay and enjoyed his well-deserved
pension from the NYPD. Denise started a new business with her husband and by
then I got a job with my current employer at the college. With that said, I had
no real reason to have any contact with Denise unless Stephen was involved.
I opened the e-mail.
Mike, call me the moment you read this. It is important. Even if it is two
o’clock in the morning, please call. I need to speak to you!
She included her home phone, her cell phone, and the number of the business she
and her husband owned together. I wouldn’t call a woman I only knew casually at
5 AM. And not with my wife in the shower getting ready for work a few yards
away in our main bathroom. I didn’t want to endure her district attorney-style
grilling if she caught me calling a thirty-something woman from the secrecy of
our computer room at dawn.
I waited until I got to work. My job keeps me in front of a computer all day
and I can check my e-mail messages at will. I opened e-mail, navigated
to my inbox, found her cell phone number, and then I called her up.
“Mike, oh my God Mike. It’s about Stephen.” She was bawling, weeping
uncontrollably.
“What Denise, what happened?” My stomach tightened.
“He died. He died last night. He had a heart attack.” She said something
else, but I didn’t understand it.
That old joke about someone bluntly being told, The cat died, came to
mind.
There was no wind up to her delivery. She simply blurted, he died,
just like that.
Your relationship with someone and how you receive bad news about them reveals
much about how others perceive your connection to that person. Stephen was my
friend since 1989. We worked together in a squad car for almost six years,
backed each other up each other on the streets, and knew things about each
other which our families were not aware of. Still, I found it odd that a woman
from my part-time job was the only person who contacted me during that initial
shock and mourning.
Once, only a few years ago, Stephen helped me out by giving me a job, insisting
on paying me to set up his computer network. My family and I struggled because
I had recently retired from the police department. I had brand new computer
certifications, but no experience. One evening, when we were locking up his
store, I thanked him, told him how much he was helping me, and I added I did
not think I could pay him back. With a raised hand, he cut me off and said, “Hey,
we rode in a sector car together. That’s for life.”
“He died?” That was all I could muster in response.
She gave me the details stating that he picked up his son, Jimmy, his only
child, from the airport. Jimmy had come home from college to be with his
parents for the holidays. Despite being divorced, Stephen purchased a home
around the block from his ex-wife to stay close to his son and help raise him.
To his credit, he maintained an amicable relationship with her for their son’s
benefit. I met his former spouse, Terry, only once, since their separation many
years prior. That night, he took his son home to meet his new girlfriend, a
woman whom he had been dating for about two months. The three of them had plans
to go out for dinner. He collapsed while preparing for a shower and could not
be revived.
I hung up with Denise and ran outside my building. It was a crisp, cloudless
day, and I ignored the cold. The folks in my office couldn’t help but overhear
what I said to Denise, but they politely refrained from asking what was going
on until I eventually told them about my friend’s passing.
For about two hours, I was in shock and denial. To make some sense of what
happened, I called the county coroner’s office. A polite woman who answered the
phone knew whom I was referring to off the top of her head.
“Yes, sir, they brought him in last night. His ex-wife is coming to claim
his body.”
He was no longer a person, but a body.
After muttering a few polite words of thanks, I hung up. The Dean offered me
the rest of the day off, and I refused. The best way to deal with his
unexpected passing—a forty-eight-year-old man’s death being unexpected—was
simply to put my head down and work.
After hanging up with the coroner’s office and conferring with my supervisor, I
called my wife to tell her about Stephen.
“What do you mean, he died?” She asked with the same incredulity which I
had when I spoke with Denise. “Isn’t he supposed to come over tomorrow?”
She was right. He was due to come by the next day for an informal visit just
before Christmas, and I was looking forward to seeing him. Instead, I was going
to attend his wake.
The next evening I arrived at the funeral home and was curiously pleased to see
marked, New York City police cars among the clogged streets and parking lots
nearby. Hundreds showed up to pay their respects. If you knew Stephen, you
loved him. He was smart, funny, gregarious, and had a bit of a mischievous side
to him. But he was loyal to a fault. As I wended my way through the dozens of
officers congregating on the front steps of the funeral home, some I knew well,
others only vaguely, I realized as good of a friend as I was to him, I was only
one of many hundreds whose lives he touched. And I am ashamed to admit that I
was a tad jealous.
Denise arrived with her husband and sought me out. She explained she did not
know my telephone number and found my e-mail address on a scrap of paper at the
bottom of her pocketbook. It was a minor miracle, considering that I gave it to
her a year before. Stephen’s son, Jimmy, remarkably showed composure for a
young man who had watched his father die only two nights earlier. And then I
saw Terry.
A receiving line formed in front of her as she took up a spot near his casket.
Terry arranged the funeral, the wake, and his burial. She even dug through his
closets and found all of the items for his dress uniform, including his name
plate, shield, tie, collar brass, and other insignia. She’d done well, and I
was touched, as she and her son were the only family Stephen had in the world.
“Hi Terry, you don’t remember me, but I’m Michael, Stephen’s friend.” I
offered my hand, and she took it and looked me in the eye.
“You’re Michael?” At first, I thought she didn’t hear me. Then she
repeated herself.
“You’re Michael? Oh, my goodness. You’re all Stephen ever spoke about.”
She stepped back and looked me up and down. Then, she smiled, but not happily;
but as if to confirm a suspicion.
“All these years,” she continued, “all I ever heard was ‘Mike and I
did this, and ‘Mike and I did that.’ He spoke about you all the
time, more than anyone in this room.” Of course, she didn’t include their
son in that comparison.
It didn’t occur to me I was crying until she offered me a tissue. We talked a
bit more and then I paid my respects to my buddy resting in a coffin.
Outside, I mingled with the cops, some in uniform and others in dark-colored
suits, on the front steps. Most of them wore grim expressions while they talked
shop and reminisced about the good old days when Stephen was alive. I couldn’t
wait to get the hell away from them. The college’s more comfortable and safe
environment made me realize how much my life had changed since leaving the job.
The death of my friend and partner also severed one of my last ties to my past
life in law enforcement.
In the months following Stephen’s death, I could not get a hold of his son despite
his acknowledgement that we should stay in touch. In addition, Denise has
remained aloof. I do not want to interfere with her life; and in fact, we had
no relationship at all except for when we worked at our mutual friend’s
business. Every once in a while, when I hear a joke that he would have laughed
at, or when I see a gadget he would have enjoyed, or when I stumble on a hard
memory from my days on patrol, I think of him.
Early in my early career as a rookie, a veteran cop who was about to retire
offered me this adage:
“On this job, you’ll have secrets which you won’t tell your wife, your
parents, your priest, or anyone that you know, except your partner. Those
things die with you.”
Man, he was right. As of today, I have nothing but a few photos to remind me of
the time I had with my friend. It is as if he never existed. There is no one
else who I can turn to and talk to about all the things I did with him, and no
one who will understand except other cops; and still there are things that even
they should not be privy to. All of that died with my partner.
A long time ago, we rode in a sector car together. That’s for life.