Tea and Stones

I was getting ready to go to the restaurant and received a call from a young woman saying that a friend of hers, who was an associate of mine at E.T.S.U. (in 1989-90) requested that I come to see her at Johnson City medical center. I told the young woman that I would do that today. She then insisted that I had to come last night. Yanno, sometimes even though a person's voice doesn't actually transmit urgency, it is sensed when s/he gently insists. I went to see the associate.

There weren't a lot of tubes and wires, although she was on oxygen. When I first arrived and introduced myself to the young woman that called me, she left! Just a "nice to meet you" and whoosh she was gone. That left me feeling more than just a little awkward. I looked at the woman in the bed as she asked me to come and sit down. She talked about how we used to hang out, her children and my Wa played together, we had Biology Lab together, and she asked if I married, and what I am doing now.

I told her that I am currently reading Mitch Albom's "Tuesdays with Morrie" and she asked if I would read some of it to her. I did read to her, until she passed at 0430 this morning. She simply sighed and died.

I didn't remember her. I didn't tell her that, and I don't know that she knew it, but I didn't remember her. I didn't remember having Biology Lab with her, or our children playing together, or hanging out with her. I don't even know her name. I know her first name now, of course, but realized on the drive back to Greeneville that I don't know her last name. I started to turn around and go back, just for that...but then decided I didn't need to know.

It's ironic that I am reading this book that deals with living, while dying, and I am called out of the blue to go sit with someone I knew and interacted with, but don't remember (because of the whole rupture thing), and read the last four chapters to her, at her request. Then she dies. Just dies. She, like Morrie, knew she was going to die, which is why I had to come last night.

I think I am a little bit overwhelmed. But even in that state I thought she deserves mention. I don't know why she wanted to see me, she didn't say. She didn't share any deep secrets or leave messages to be delivered to others. After the sigh I held her hand and told her goodbye. I wondered if she heard me as she left her mortal bonds behind. I didn't cry though. I breathed deep several times, and left the nurses to do what they had to do. They didn't ask me anything at all. I cried on the way back. I don't know why. It reminded me of a Rod McKuen poem:

Listen to the Warm
By Rod McKuen

I live alone.
It hasn't always been that way.
It's nice sometimes
to open up the heart a little
and let some hurt come in.
It proves you're still alive.

I'm not sure what it means.
Why we cannot shake the old loves from our minds.
It must be that we build on memory
and make them more that what they were.
And is the manufacture
just a safe device for closing up the wall?

I do remember.
The only fuzzy circumstance
is something where-and how.
Why, I know.
It happens just because we need
to want and to be wanted too,
when love is here or gone
to lie down in the darkness
and listen to the warm.

There were little frozen snowflakes on my windscreen when I left the hospital. I had to let the truck warm up for a few minutes.

I'm really tired now...