I hope my wide readership (if I decide to tell anyone at all about this blog) will not be turned off by the melancholy of my very first entry. They will not always be like this! But yesterday I had my first real exposure to human mortality, and my head would just be too unforgivably plunged in the sand if I didn't face it.

Walking from my father's car to the front door of the convalescent hospital, I found a row of women (no men for some reason) sitting in their wheelchairs lined up behind the wide glass sliding doors leading to the lobby. They looked as if they were waiting for the door to open so they could make their mad dash of an escape, but then the door would open to a periodic visitor like me, and they wouldn't even see their opportunity. Their eyes were open but I don't know how much they really saw around them at all. Perhaps the contents of their minds' eyes were far more beautiful. Speaking of not seeing, I walked right by without a glance back. I must get in to see Papa, I excused myself.

Grandma stood in the hallway outside his room, beaming as I approached. I hugged her and tried to prepare for Papa, a man once virile and stoic. From photos and stories I have gleaned facts about his past; he was second in command of a submarine in World War II. He was a mechanical engineer in a naval shipyard. He fathered two children, and grandfathered three. In his retirement he drove a beheamoth motor home to all states but two. Now he needs two people to help him stand up, and one to help him eat. I want to protect his dignity and not reveal too much about his condition and emasculating limitations. But I also don't want to hush up the unpleasantness just to keep our comfort levels intact. When reading about learning disabilities in preparation for my job (tutoring L.D. students at the Community College), I came across an interesting point. Healthy, "normal" people look at disabilities as if they will never have one. The implication being that, we all WILL have one. So, this is my goal in showing some extent of Papa's infirmities.

He lay on a bed bound on the side by metal bars. He used these bars once or twice to push or pull himself into a more comfortable position. I also imagine they would stop a person from falling out of bed. He looked tiny and frail. He sank into the bed and his skin hung off him like thin papery cloth. But he smiled! And he chatted and smiled again, and make visible and arduous efforts to laugh at my dumb jokes. I wanted to touch him a lot. I wanted to want it. Grandma kept doing it. But this was a man who never made any advances toward physical affection in my whole LIFE! Why should he want it now? I kept putting my hands on his shoulder and arm and hands anyway. I needed to know and feel him. I wanted to have this touch in my memory; maybe someday I will need to refer to it. I have other impressions in my mind-- certain qualities of his face and demeanor which were recently acquired and which it hurt to see. I will keep them. But as it was time to leave I leaned down and he gave me the small hug of a person who can barely move. "I love you," I told him, trying to swallow the ball of grief in my throat. He said back to me for the first time in my life, "I love you, too."

I sat in the car and wept, wondering if I would ever see him again, cursing my fear and sadness. If he could have such an attitude, then why couldn't I, twenty-five and healthy? I called Claire and sobbed a bit, but had to go follow Grandma back to her house, so I stanched the tears and wiped my eyes. The last thing Grandma probably wants to see is me blubbering after one brief visit.

Later, driving back to San Francisco, I was listening to a book on tape I gave to Dad for Christmas about Buddhism. Once, when Buddha was having a discourse with the people of one village, a woman clutching a child charged to the front of the crowd. "Give me medicine for my child," she command him. "I have a cure," Buddha told her, and an incredulous murmur spread through the crowd. What is this cruel hoax, people wondered, for anyone could see that the child was dead. Delirious in her grief, the woman did not see, and would not give up the little corpse. "You must find a single mustard seed, but it must come from a household where no one has ever died." The woman ran off to begin her search. At each house she asked first for a mustard seed and only as an afterthought asked if anyone had ever died under that roof. But each family said yes, a family member had died there. She began to listen to their stories about lost loved ones. Some wept and some were able to laugh about their stories of the distant and irretrievable past, and soon the woman forgot to ask for a mustard seed at all. The mother was exposed to so many stories about the dead, she was able to detach herself enough from her delusions and see her child in his real state. She began to see it is the inevitable state for everything alive. She went to a field, buried him, and let him go. "All compound things are impermanent. With mindfulness, strive on."