- I remember the day well. My sister called in a panic,
her young son Gary {really mine}, was dying in the University of New Mexico
Hospital, could they come immediately. I say really mine, because Gary
had lived a great deal of his life with us, due to his father's irrational
behavior, due to alcoholism. No child should have to suffer a life with
an unpredictable, soused, self-pitying, violent alcoholic. If a woman is
married to such an irreponsible, piss poor excuse for a man, who abuses
the children, she is obligated to leave.
-
- As it was, my sister and her husband, had the usual excuses
of why traveling from CT. to New Mexico would be impossible. I made arrangements,
for my younger son and myself, to fly out immediately. I called my older
son in California, and he made arrangements to meet us at the Albuquerque
airport. The boys, Jerry, Brian and Gary; had done all the things that
boys so love to do; hiking, camping, and exploring in the mountains of
Pennsylvania where we lived. It was an idyllic place for children.
-
- The arrival at the Intensive Care Unit of the hospital
was a shock. Gary was unconscious and hooked up to a respirator and every
other machine under the sun. He had hitched across the country some months
before, out of a sense of a exploration and adventure; to meet up with
friends going to school in New Mexico. He enjoyed camping and had spent
much time out in the desert. The diagnosis was suspected Hantavirus. Rodents
spread this virus and people acquire it when they breath in air contaminated
with the virus. Most who get it die.
- In from a camping trip, his friends reported that Gary
complained of fatigue, muscle aches, and headaches. Within a few days his
condition deteriorated, to the point that he had trouble breathing. They
rushed him to the emergency room where he lost consciousness.
-
- The days passed, and Gary remained in a deep coma. On
our third day there, the doctors called us into the hallway and told us
there was little hope that he would survive, they'd done everything possible.
My youngest son started to cry. I took the boys aside, and told them it
didn't matter what dire predictions the doctors had given us; Gary was
NOT going to die, and that when we went back into the room, there must
be no crying or talk of death. I explained, that even though Gary was in
a coma, nobody could be sure what he was hearing.
-
- And so, we spent the next few days coming up with innovative
ideas on how to let Gary know we were there. We bought a tape recorder
and earphones and played his favorite music. We never stopped talking to
him or touching him. The boys reminded him of swimming holes, and their
various antics at school.My oldest, kept telling him he had to wake up,
he wanted the $30.00 that Gary owed him. One afternoon we arrived at the
intensive care waiting room to see this motely crew, of gypsy-like people,
singing and banging on a tamborine. A man who introduced himself as a priest
of the streets, with a mildewed, moth eaten black suit on, told me he'd
come to perform a healing ceremony. They had with them, mummified bats,
incense, and these huge black crows wings. I thanked them, but told them
we had our own healing ceremony, and we weren't into bats and bug infested
bird wings. I left a message at the desk that under no circumstances were
they to go into Gary's room. Hantavirus was enough, I didn't need rabies
or plague!
-
- On into the second week he opened his eyes. He couldn't
speak, due to the respirator, but it was then that I knew he'd be fine.
A few days later, disoriented, and confused he was removed from the respirator,
and gained strength daily. He remembered getting to the emergency room
and then nothing. He did know we were there, but said he felt like he was
in a dark tunnel, and couldn't find his way out.
- We stayed until he was discharged, with medicine for
seizures; which the doctors said he'd have to take for the rest of his
life. On a drive to Taos, which we'd never seen, and to celebrate, we threw
the bottle out the window. No, he never had a seizure. I felt very strongly,
that his recovery was a miracle, and as such, miracles didn't come with
seizures.
-
- But this story is not about a miracle, but indifference
and the lie of sanctuary. Yes, there are parents who don't rush to the
side of a dying child. Hard to believe! Then, there was Gary's telling
me of his days on the road. I asked him to write it down, being the gifted
writer that I'd always thought him to be. His father had, in one of his
drunken rages, accused him of being a Queer, for having such interests
in music, the arts and writing! The ignorance of people is impossible to
imagine, and never ceases to amaze me. Some people should never breed!
And so this is Gary's story.
-
- "It was a cold, overcast morning, and I found myself
standing on the narrow gravel shoulder of an exit off I-40, somewhere in
Maryland, 40 miles south of Baltimore. Dave, the Hawaiian trucker who I'd
been riding with since Amarillo, Texas, let me off with an apology that
he couldn't take me further and a 10 dollar bill.
-
- The sky was gunmetal gray and threatening rain, which
didn't exactly make my spirits soar. I had no real idea as to where I might
be. I felt desolate, hopeless and lost; in the spirtual as well as physically.
I was dog tired, hungry and coughing up green crap. 'Kiss my ass, Jack
Kerouac', I thought as I adjusted my backpack.
-
- Being on the road with nothing but your boots and wits,
gives you a very different prespective on life. Like so many other things
in life, there's a wide gap between talking about it and doing it. Two
different worlds, sitting in a warm kitchen sipping coffee and discussing
the hardships of the road, and the cold hard reality of standing there
alone in the rain with nothing but a dismal hope, and a sharpened screwdriver
in your pocket, wondering if your next ride is going to be a nutcase or
a pervert. It's a scary, desperate feeling standing there with your thumb
cocked, trying not to look like an escaped mental patient, even though
you know you look like hell and anyone crazy enough to stop and pick you
up is either more dangerous and warped than you are, or a saint or angel
in disguise. To quote the old Negro, "Som's bastards, som's not. Dat's
de sco'".
-
- You take on the senses of a rabbit or a hunted animal;
aware that all the world has become your enemy and expecting nothing. Anything
else is gravy. You stand there alone in the cold watching cars pass you
by, their occupants safe and warm, headed somewhere they belong and are
welcome.
-
- When I get to the point where I feel like I just can't
take anymore of this hell-hole world, I remember the word, Invictus. It's
Latin, means unconquered! When it comes down to it, and all the lies and
masks are stripped away, beyond all the bad directions and mistakes I've
made, that's the way I feel, unconquered. I can be beaten, but I can't
be defeated. I believe that, and it's enough to keep me going. It has to
be.
-
- Anyway, I walked 5 miles or so up the road, in search
of shelter as the first drops of rain came drizzling down. I started singing,
"Zippity-doo-dah", in a futile attempt at cheering myself up.
This is it I thought, I'm going to get pneumonia and die in a ditch. In
a couple of days maybe someone will find my stiff carcass and I'd be taken
and buried in some mudhole of a Potter's Field, with a little metal marker
reading, "Here lies an unknown loser who died in a ditch, RIP".
-
- It was then that I noticed two possible chances for shelter,
sparing me my nameless fate. The first was a large corporate park, with
an executive style, Holiday Inn. The second, a small Catholic Church. I
figured that the good citizens over in corporate fairyland, would be less
than thrilled at my seedy, sickly presence, but a church, ah, yes a church!
The church , traditional 'sanctuary' of the hopeless and lost, the wayward
traveler who has come so far and can go no further. Yes, they would take
me in, the kindly nuns of Sanctuary Roman Catholic Church. Dig, I ain't
kidding you, that was the actual name of the place. They would feed me
from their bountiful harvest and give me a clean warm bed and soft plush
pillows where I could rest my weary skin and bones.
-
- Lesson In Life #10: Always expect the worst out of any
given situation, anything else is gravy. I entered the warmth and dryness
of the church, set down my guitar and unshouldered my pack. I dried my
hair as best I could with my damp Army trench coat, trying to look as respectable
as possible.
-
- In the church proper, there were about 20 little kids
singing, "Yes, I love Jesus". One of them who was not paying
very close attention to the proceedings, looked back into the hallway and
noticed me standing there. His face showed a mixture of awe and perplexity,
as though I were a space alien. I winked at him and walked into the office.
A large black woman, her hair done up in corn rolls, wearing purple lipstick,
coordinating with her purple outfit, was seated behind a desk typing away
on an IBM Selectric. Her baleful, bovine eyes looked more than a little
startled as I entered.
"Hello," I said pleasantly, "I'm trying to make it back
home, and I was wondering if there was anyone here who could give me a
lift out to the nearest rest stop, along I-95. My last ride only got me
as far as here, and when I started hitching from the exit, a cop stopped
and said he'd arrest me, if I didn't get moving. I figure if I can get
to a rest stop, maybe I can strike up a conversation with someone who'll
give me a ride."
-
- She looked somewhat flabbergasted at my speech, as though
she was trying to absorb it into her massive frame and digest it. I must
have been a strange break in her monotonous routine. There was an awkward
moment of silence (she was digesting). I just stood there radiating desperation.
She said, "Why don't you have a seat, I'll call Father Brown. Okay?"
"Sure, thank-you", I said, smiling as I sat in a contoured orange
plastic chair. She picked up the phone and dialed. "Hello, Father
Brown, could you please come down to the office, we have a little problem
here."
She resumed typing as though I'd vaporized. Meanwhile, I thought to myself,
'Hmmm, so that's what I am, a little problem". Well, I told my woeful
tale to the good Father Brown and he stood there listening patiently, nodding
and smiling. I finished my spiel with an, I came here because I'm sure
you good Christian folk understand, take pity on my poor-ass routine. For
all my hemming and hawing, Father Brown was just terribly sorry. "We're
having a wedding here in another half hour and we just can't get away,
you understand." I stood there silent, with what I'm sure must have
been a god-awful, cynical expression on my face. "Well ain't this
just typical", I thought. Good Father Brown, out of the seemingly
boundless depths of his generous heart, offered to let me hand around for
another half hour until the wedding started.
"Well, so much for good old fashioned Christian pissing compassion,
eh?" I didn't stick around for whatever lame reply he was formulating.
I just grabbed my pack and guitar and hit the road as the saying goes,
feeling like a real American hero. Telling off a man of God like that,
I thought, had me handling the whole thing rather poorly, but I said what
I felt.
-
-
- There I was again, walking. Day turned to night and I
was still without shelter. I didn't want to tempt fate by hitching at night.
That would be like asking for a one way ticket to the bone yard. Fact is,
that's exactly where I wound up anyway. Fortunately, not dead, just very
tired. The sun was setting and I'd resolved to find a place to camp for
the night. The little graveyard was several miles up the road from I-95.
It looked like a quiet , secluded place where no one would disturb me.
I made my way to the back of an abandoned church, which brooded sentinel-like,
over the little field of ancient, weather beaten tombstones. The names
on most of them were so time ravaged, as to be illegible. All except for
one, which read, "Bessie". Bessie's last name had sunk into the
earth, along with the date and the traditional, "May she rest in peace
or whatever."
-
- I hid my pack and guitar under a small dead fall of old
rotten tree branches, feeling that it was somehow appropriate that I had
wound up here in this desolate little graveyard, with these nameless and
forgotten dead. I wasn't bitter or cynical about it. I've always liked
graveyards. Always found them to be peaceful and soothing. It was a welcome
change, after a day of disappointment and aimless trudging, watching people
in their cars passing me by.
-
- I settled into my sleeping bag, against the descending
cold, hoping to catch a little cat nap before dawn's light and another
day on the road. Snuffed my cigarette out and closed my eyes. I took comfort
in the fact, that at least I wouldn't be given the 'bum's rush' here.
-
- I whispered a silent goodnight to my newfound friend
Bessie, resting my head on her sinking marker. Funny thing, I thought,
Can't find comfort or sanctuary with the living, ends up you gotta turn
to the dead. Goodnight Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are." Gary Meres
-
- "Now my friends, I am opposed to the system of society
in which we live today, not because I lack the natural equipment to do
for myself but because I am not satisfied to make myself comfortable knowing
that there are thousands of my fellow men who suffer for the barest necessities
of life. We were taught under the old ethic that a man's business on this
earth was to look out for himself. That was the ethic of the jungle; the
ethic of the wild beast. Take care of yourself, no matter what my become
of your fellow man. Thousands of years ago the question was asked, 'Am
I my brother's keeper?" That question has never yet been answered
in a way that is satisfactory to civilized society."
-
- " Yes, I am my brother's keeper. I am under a moral
obligation to him that is inspired, not by any maudlin sentimentality but
by the higher duty I owe myself. What would you think of me if I were capable
of seating myself at a table and gorging myself with food and saw about
me the children of my fellow beings starving to death." Eugene Debs...1908
speech.
-
-
- Comment
- From Name Withheld
- 9-18-3
-
- I am amazed at how naive Gary and his second mother are
about the world. Gary went hitchiking across the country for a little adventure.
He expected everybody along the way to drop everything and provide for
him.
-
- Gary put himself in harm's way, not out of need, but
for some adventure. Now whatever happened to him out there was everybody
else's fault. Never mind that people have their own problems. Most people
have more than they can handle on their own plate. This is not a very nice
world. It is a very dangerous world. People who have gone out of their
way to help some needy person have been victimized and often times killed
by that very person they tried to help.
-
- You can't expect to show up someplace, wet and dirty
with your little backpack and be given a warm meal and a nice clean bed
to sleep in. Most small churches are not equipped for that, neither are
the big ones. It is very dangerous to take somebody in whom you know nothing
about.
-
- If they did, the word would get out and they would have
hundreds waiting at the door every night to be fed and taken care of.
-
- I think what Gary should have been taught is that most
of all, he is responsible for what happens to him. As long as he has a
choice, he is responsible.
-
- Comment
From C Ewing
9-19-3
-
- You know Judith, I just reread Gary's story again, thinking
perhaps that I was too hard on him in my first comment to you about him,
but on review I feel now that my words about him were charitable in the
extreme. Gary is a very troubled person. He is full of anger and is a walking
ball of contempt for humanity. He needs immediate help before he does himself
or someone else serious harm. His writings may have a cathartic effect
on him in the long-run but for now they can best serve him by alarming
others who care about him, as you obviously do.
-
- However comforting self-pity and blaming are to him (and
you) in the short-run, a more productive message would be for you (and
him) to acknowledge that even though his parents (and society) did a really
lousy job with him in the past, it is now time for him to move beyond the
mess he's in to a place that is different and healthier. Easier said than
done, for sure, but doable nonetheless. You may need help too. Does alcoholism
run in your family? In your role as a parent figure your best instincts
to protect and guide Gary might instead be enabling him to remain a victim
trapped in the past and thereby suffer needlessly.
-
- Co-dependency (that god awful cliche) can turn even the
best intentions into a snake. It is insidious, harmful and self-replicating,
like an internal virus that disguises itself as something it is not. In
your case, what it is and what it is not is for you to decide. But I have
my suspicions and I am concerned about both of you. Caleb cal_ewing@yahoo.com
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