Wrinkles

Before we had wrinkles we met in college, were in each other’s weddings, trekked across country on Amtrak, and hitchhiked with characters out of a Stephen King novel. Alan and I nurtured our friendship through grad school, career choices, the deaths of loved ones, and our persistent love for the Chicago Cubs—the core piece in our annual baseball junkets to various ballparks—that for twenty years began and ended with much-anticipated visits to the Friendly Confines of Wrigley Field, home of our beloved Northsiders.

Alan and I spoke in February about taking our annual three-city trip to attend a series of baseball games. He’d been suffering from a deteriorating right hip, and when I asked about it, he insisted that he could continue his busy travel and consulting schedule until after Thanksgiving, just as he assured me that Tylenol and prescription meds would allow him to keep his commitment to the summer trip.

Tickets, to six baseball games in three cities—Chicago, Minneapolis, and Milwaukee—were laid out on my desk, alongside JetBlue and Amtrak reservations. Reservations of hotel dates lay on Alan’s desk waiting confirmation.

Then, in late June when our 20th annual summer baseball junket was one month away, we had a phone call that shocked and surprised me, though perhaps it shouldn’t have.

“I can’t do it,” my close friend said, “the pain is excruciating.”

“Our baseball trip?” I asked.

“Any travel,” he replied, choked-up and in a weak voice unfamiliar to me. “I’m house bound, crippled by the ceaseless pain.”

The thin veil that separates selfish from selfless in my soul, porous even when I’m fully conscious of the conflict, became nonexistent. My first thoughts, I’m ashamed to say, rather than being ones of sympathy were of anger and disappointment.

Damn you! I silently railed. This should have been taken care of last spring when an opening for surgery was offered, one you turned down because you’re so enamored with your over-booked travel schedule and presenting the image of being indomitable. We talked about this and you assured me the trip was on and that you’d manage the pain. You actually turned down my offer to postpone purchasing game and travel tickets because your tight schedule had only this one window available for baseball.

Shit! And it went on in this way for another few seconds—mean and strident thoughts pushing aside the realities of his suffering.

You don’t take care of yourself and now I’m paying the price for your self-indulgent lifestyle. I’ve had two hip replacements and know the drill, but hell if only you’d listened to me, and damn if I didn’t buy into your assurance you’d be able to do this. I knew better but didn’t listen to myself—shame on me.

The rant continued to immerse me in anger even as I heard his groans and shallow breathing. I didn’t want to care, offer condolence, or ask how he felt.

His intractable pain and suffering coupled with the growing awareness of my unacceptable thinking brought a welcome pause in our conversation. But then I began to hear my selfish inner thoughts, and in the judgment and sharp criticism, I heard the scolding, harsh voice of my mother and father, an unrelenting diatribe of how disappointing I was to them.

Mortified, I replied, “Let’s take care of you first, what can I do to help?”

“I’m so sorry,” he said through tears, “I blame myself for this, but didn’t want to disappoint you or myself.”

We ended the call promising to reconnect the following day, giving both of us time to revisit the change in plans. During the ensuing twenty-four hours when I wasn’t conjuring up plans to dissuade him from his decision—we can use wheelchairs, stock up on pain meds, arrogant me-first plot lines I acknowledged and resisted—I wrestled to prioritize what would be best for Alan.

When trapped in the murkiness of my shadow or dark side I listen to soothing jazz, an attempt to improvise on the craziness in my soul, I close my eyes to look inside and get to know the self I give voice to but want no part of, or reach out to authors whose journeys parallel mine.

The words of Saint Paul, written to friends in Rome, occurred to me later that night: “I don’t understand my own actions…for I don’t do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate…I can will what is right, but I can’t do it. For I don’t do the good I want, but the evil I don’t want is what I do…wretched man that I am.”

Bruno Bettelheim’s book, Freud and Man’s Soul, happened to be on my desk. Turning to the final chapter I reread words I’d visited on just such occasions in the past when internal distress occupied my soul. The author recounts William Faulkner stating in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech that “the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself…alone can make good writing.” Bettelheim carries the thought further when he states that “Freud took care to emphasize the conflicts within the soul, and their consequences for an individual—how he could live well with himself despite these conflicts—or possibly because of them, since they also make for the richness of his inner life.”

There can be no gain without loss, no light without darkness, and no yes without no.

The next day Alan and I talked again.

He asked if instead of not getting together I’d be willing to spend that time in Florida taking care of him at their seaside condo. Sara, his wife, had urgent commitments in Michigan, and my presence would enable her to fulfill them. “I’ll buy your tickets and placate some of my guilt,” he offered and we managed a brief laugh.

I agreed, and we both felt relief from the dark and stifling tethering to selfishness, guilt, judgmental thoughts, pride and vanity, and an unexpected and embraceable way into loving friendship—and so began our alternate plans.

We could watch a few games on TV, make our own “game-fare,” enjoy each other’s company, perhaps talk about being fragile and vulnerable with each other, about love and friendship, sacrifice and suffering, and how adversity, when taken in can facilitate change.

While awaiting the Houston-Tampa connecting flight I thumbed through a journal I keep with less diligence than I like to admit, but there I discovered a Frederick Buechner quote: “For Jesus peace seems to have meant not the absence of struggle but the presence of love.”

Hope began to seep into the cracks in the darkness through Saint Paul, Faulkner, Freud, Jesus and Buechner—I was in good company.

I arrived in Sarasota two days after Alan was released from the hospital, a decision his surgeon agreed to if twenty-four hour “watchful-care” was available as needed. He assured his doc that he’d be in competent hands, mine, but I was less confident. Alan had been offered the use of their neighbor’s condominium, a larger and more spacious living area than in his own home, which we turned into our own rehab-unit.

During the next eight days we relaxed together, celebrated his modest gains in mobility, self-care and the gradual cessation of pain. The appearance of the red tide and accompanying stench didn’t deter us from finding hidden and obvious pleasure in each other’s company. Humor became our constant companion as we shuffled through the aisles of the Publix market, laughed to the point of tears at politician’s gaffes and the faux-pas’ of humankind—our own in particular. On occasion the simple tasks of normal hygiene required four hands. We ate well, imbibed with discretion, and shared an abundance of joy in Alan’s physical healing. Disappointments were embraced and lessons learned.

Tolstoy wrote it, and for eight days we experienced it: “In the same way the night sky reveals the stars our suffering reveals to us the meaning of our lives.”

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