Ghost

Many cultures believe that a soul remains in the area of its life for three days after death, sometimes longer, finishing the details of its life, checking on the loved ones it left behind. During that time, you must do everything in your power to appease that spirit, or confuse it in some traditions so that it doesn't wreak havoc upon you from the other side. In many cultures, that handful of days is a narrow window to communicate with the dead, to wish them well before they begin their journey, to say the things you forgot to say while they were still a part of your world.
But in most folklore, especially Eastern European folklore, ghosts and spirits are cunning and opportunistic. They attend the times when our eyes most deceive us, the shadowy light of dawn and dusk. They can appear as corporeal beings, creatures that interact and seem real in every sense of the word. That is part of their disguise and deception. You must be careful as you never know what spirit you're dealing with. A spirit you think may be a loved one could in truth be a local godling or demon wanting to ingratiate itself to you for its own purposes. Desire and a willingness to believe what you see are what make you vulnerable.
Karen and I went out to the lake in the park to watch the sunset tonight. In the twilight on our way home, a black cat sat astride our path, one we'd never seen before. He watched us, unfazed by our approach. His eyes almost glowed against the dark fur of his narrow face like topaz jewels backlit in a stained-glass panel, like the one Karen made me of Smoke many years ago.
As we got nearer, he started to leave, then stopped and looked at us again. And cried, like an infant, or a Siamese. We squatted down and held out our hands to show we were harmless as we know to do with strange cats. He approached cautiously, sensing we were safe, still crying intermittently. He sniffed our hands. Karen petted him. I gently stroked his side. He was a young, unneutered male with well-groomed fur that wasn't coarse like it gets when a cat lives its life outside. Not thin like he was wild, but no sign of a collar. Definitely comfortable with people.
But was he real, or a ghost? Perhaps he was a messenger carrying news from the other side, or relaying what he saw the other way. Karen is convinced he was real, that he had substance. I'm not as certain. My people believe that spirits inhabit every stone and tree, every mountain and river. Animals can be omens, good or bad, couriers from another world to remind us of things we've forgotten, or to warn us of things we have not yet seen. Sometimes these things are only revealed in time. Maybe he was just a construct of my own desire. Or just a friendly black cat with a few white guard hairs that coincidentally lived nearby. It's hard to know.
We all see the world in different ways. Most days, I'm not quite sure if I should completely believe my eyes. And, some days, I wish I could.


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III

Scars

I am still reminiscing, I'm not sure why. Perhaps because spring has wakened the beast within enough to yawn and scratch its hairy hide, wondering what it was doing before the long night descended, brooding as Siegfried's Funeral March plays across its mind.

I was watching "The Deadliest Catch" the other night. It's a show on Discovery about crab fishermen in Alaska in case you've never seen it. At the beginning of the episode, they were talking to one of the captains who had his son on board for the season as a kind of apprentice. This kid was maybe 18. The captain was telling the story of when his son was younger and wanted to prove how tough he was. In the local bars there is a ritual between men where they lay their forearms together and drop a lit cigarette between them. The one who flinches first loses. So that's what this man did with his son. The father flinched first. He said that's when he knew the kid was something special. They both showed the scars to prove it.

I've been thinking about that description a lot since I heard it. The image disturbed me. If your child were to show up at school with a burn like that in Florida, I'm pretty sure you'd have some explaining to do or be up for long conversation with DCF if they were paying attention. That was the first thought that sprang to mind.

But I'm not usually content with the quickest and easiest answer. I felt conflicted, though I couldn't say why. So I thought about it longer. These crab fishermen are tough. I think they have to be to do their jobs in such extreme conditions. The father was obviously proud of his son for besting him at his own game. One way to look at it was that the father was preparing his son for the world he would inherit if he followed in his footsteps. I'm sure the father also looked at it as something voluntary, something that his son had chosen to do. But then, was there some level of coercion in their family dynamic that made the son feel he had to prove himself to his father in that way? Or had he picked it up as a societal norm from the behavior of those around him? I wasn't sure.

Intellectually, I understand the purpose of such rituals. The son couldn't be seen as weak or a quitter or he would never gain the respect of the men he needed to succeed in his father's business. As an apprentice, he had to prove himself to them every day for a long time. Part of that has a practical side. These men's lives depend on each other every day at sea for weeks at a time where no other help is likely to be forthcoming. Bering's sea, like the North plied by his ancestors, is harsh and unforgiving. Men die out there every year. The crews need to know that a perspective addition will watch their backs when conditions are at their worst. It's like basic training in the military: it's better to know whether someone is likely to wash out before you get to combat.

Part of my conflict is that I see many of these rituals as unnecessary, overgrown boys playing at war without ever having experienced one. There is nothing like a mixture of boredom, pressure and a harsh environment to bring out the worst in men. I think we as a gender revel in making each other's lives miserable. Sometimes I think it's the only way we can feel better about our own situations. And shut each other up.

I also know that these rituals can only tell you so much. Until a person is in a critical situation, you really have no idea how they'll react. Seemingly brave men break and cower under fire, while skittish, nebbish types sometimes transform into lions that will eat their own young. You never know until someone points a pistol at your face and is prepared to pull the trigger. That is the harsh reality of this life.

Don't get me wrong; I respect these men. My great-grandfather was shipwrecked twice in the North Atlantic while he served in Sweden's merchant marine. The second time, he quit the sea and settled here, one of only a handful of survivors. My father rode submarines while earning a living as a Lockheed engineer. He knew people aboard the Scorpion and the Thresher when they went down. As a Raytheon contractor, I spent a few weeks at sea on Navy cruisers, including skirting a hurricane on a run from Jacksonville to Norfolk, so I think I understand a little. In college I was pulled from the ocean when our rented boat sank off the Keys out of sight of land. I was the one swimming after the lifejackets that were floating away and throwing them back to the people who hadn't put them on. At least the water off Florida is warm, and we were rescued before we had to stay the night.

Part of my problem is that I never thought I had to prove myself to anyone but me. I don't do fraternities or initiations. I don't do hazing, nor do I tolerate it being done when I have a say. I don't get sucked into stupid actions on a dare. I see such things as pointless and a general waste of energy better spent on getting a job done. If you're competent, you have nothing you need to prove.

It's not that I don't do stupid things. I do. My wife can attest to one involving alcohol, a disparaging remark directed at a female friend, and a challenge to defend her honor that involved a four-story climb in the dark. Since my adversary chose the contest, he had to respect me more when he lost and correct his behavior at least within earshot.

And I'm not afraid to test my limits. Ask Karen about another climb in the dark, this one up a radio tower stone cold sober without a safety line because I wondered if I could. It was worth it if only for the view from horizon to horizon while swaying in the breeze. As someone smarter than me once said, you can't fix stupid.

I do what I do for my own reasons, not to prove myself to others. And I hate giving away any indication of how seriously someone might need to take me. I'd rather have them underestimate me. Perhaps that's because I never developed an abiding sense of trust in people, of being able to rely on them. I have a deeply ingrained self-reliant streak, much to my detriment at times. I don't ask for help doing things that I can do myself. Typical frontier thinking. Lone wolf behavior.

Though I do understand the value of scars. I used to be able to recount the story behind most of the ones I carry across my body. The one where I accidentally gouged my thumb with a pocketknife while whittling. The one where I tried to slice off a knuckle when I slipped with an X-acto and band-aided the flap back on until it healed. The one on my back where a surgeon removed an aberrant cyst. The pattern across my side where he took out my gallbladder. The one on my shin beneath which the bone was cracked and I never realized it. The one where my knee was wired back together. The one on my abdomen that corrected the defect that tried to kill me as an infant. That doesn't count the obvious signs of a thrice-broken nose, the fractured collarbone, the crooked, unset toes and the bevy of invisible concussions.

Then, there is a set of four scars running across my left forearm just below the elbow. I am frequently asked about them, especially when I go to give blood. My usual snide answer is that I cut myself shaving. Or, if I'm in tolerant mood, I'll say that I got them once while camping. Both are true, though technically I wasn't shaving at the time. Most people think a feral cat or a raccoon put them there. The truth is that I carved the first three on a vision quest in the mountains of North Carolina. The fourth I added a few years later.

Each has a name, a real person I associated with an invisible scar as I laid the real one down. People and events I wanted to remember, not that I was likely to forget. One tried to kill me, while another only beat me half to death, though I don't remember much about the incident. The third, well, he believes I am still unproven, my mettle still untested even after he left me with the first two.

For a time, there was only the triad. Then I met a person whose actions against someone I loved required an addition. That one is the widest, the person whose betrayal and lack of contrition remain unforgiven. Harsh, but transforming the trio to a quartet beat the alternative at the time.

Because of the events behind these scars, I guess I never felt the need for any rite of passage to predict whether I'd survive. Most of the rituals people cling to in our modern world strike me as antiquated or contrived. Perhaps I should remember that most people haven't had the diverse experiences I have. Or maybe I'm misremembering, and have retold these tales until they became integrated into the persona I've constructed around myself like a personal mythology. Something to warn others off like a violin on the back of a spider, or a rattle on the tail of a snake. Brightly colored totems indicating danger.

Either way, I guess if I didn't feel the need to prove something, I'd never send this message. The handful of guys who read it will likely chuckle at my braggadocio, thinking, yeah, I could take him, while all the women are just shaking their heads. Men and their narcissistic scars.

None of which settles the original question of right and wrong in my mind. I'm not sure it's an absolute in this case. It's easy to think that everyone's life should reflect our own in all places at all times. We forget that sometimes things are the way they are for a reason, however flawed that reasoning might be. It always helps me to try on those boots and walk around a bit before I get too judgmental.

Ok, my inner beast might have gotten a little cranky from a serious case of testosterone poisoning. I think I should put it down for a nap. Perhaps it will be soothed by the sound of Wagner's adaptation of Nibelungen echoing in my ears.


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III

Patience

And now a peek behind the veil at the mind that weaves its insanity into words.

When I was sixteen, I lived with my father for several months in Fernandina Beach. For those who have never been there, it's a small town just north of Jacksonville. It's an odd mix of rural Florida and ocean-side honky-tonk. If you've ever seen the movie "Sunshine State" you'll know exactly what I'm talking about as it was filmed there and captures the place completely.

Nestled among the bars and diners and nautical-themed tourist shops on the main street was a small bookstore. When I say small, I mean basically the size of a single suite in a late '70's strip mall, though like all the historic downtown it maintained a classic brick facade. Their selection was quite limited, catering mostly to the tourist crowd. It might not even have been exclusively a bookstore, but a newsstand that carried a few shelves of books, like you would see in grocery or a pharmacy. All their books faced front cover out; that's how few they had. But being a voracious reader, I haunted the place in search of fresh paper.

One day I ran across a fantasy novel by an author I'd never heard of. It was sitting on the lowest shelf beside two or three action titles. "All Darkness Met" by Glen Cook. The cover art included a man with a sword and shield wearing chain mail and a winged helmet, a scantily clad woman, a sorcerer casting a spell and a tiger. I mean, how much cooler could it get? I skimmed the short description on the back cover and decided it might be worth a read.

Now you have to remember that back then, a sixteen year-old in a bookstore wasn't given a lot of time to make a decision. Unlike in Borders or Barnes and Noble today, reading more than the back cover or hanging around for longer than a few minutes without buying something was frowned upon, literally. The proprietor, a guy probably just over my age now, watched me with the eyes of a shepherd zealously guarding his flock against perceived wolves like me. No one, especially a teenager he didn't recognize, was going to nick even a tuft of wool, let alone a whole lamb-chop, not with him on watch. So I scooped up the book, laid down my dollar ninety-five plus tax, and left.

Again, unlike modern bookstores, in this kind of shop at this time everything was pretty much a final sale. It was best to choose wisely, as they didn't accept returns. At that point in my life, two plus bucks was a considerable entertainment investment. My allowance was $5 which I needed to cover all the other necessities of teenage life: food, movies, dates, games, you know, the essentials. I also had to use that money to fuel my father's 1970-something Buick land-ark that got single digits to the gallon if I wanted to drive the five miles back and forth to town and see my friends. Gas was cheaper then, but not that cheap. This was just beyond the peak of the second oil crisis.

Imagine my dismay when I picked up the book that night and noticed it was the third in a trilogy. It was right there on the cover, hiding in plain sight, overlooked in my nervous haste under the proprietor's scrutinous eye. As soon as I could, I returned to the store on the off-hand chance that they had the first book of the series. No such luck. Even if they had, I'm not sure I would have bought it right then. I'd already dropped two dollars and change into the unknown. What if it wasn't any good?

So here I was, stuck with a book I wasn't sure what to do with in the wilds of Nassau County where this bookshop was considered to be the height of civilization. Even the few times my father and stepmother made the trek into Jacksonville, bookstores weren't exactly high on the list of their shopping priorities. What to do, what to do?

I decided I would read the first twenty pages to see if they were any good. If they weren't, I hadn't lost any more than if I'd bought the first in the series and found it disappointing. If the short sample of this book was decent, I would know to look for the previous two. I figured twenty pages was enough to get a sense of the writing without ruining whatever story came before it. Sixteen year-old thinking.

I read that first score of pages the next night, and then just a few more, thoroughly enjoying every one. This was a fantasy novel unlike any I'd read before, edgy sword and sorcery with gritty characters who acted like they might in real life rather than as if they inhabited Tolkien's Middle Earth. It took effort, but I managed to close the cover after reading just two chapters. I resolved right then that I would wait to finish this novel until I found the other two. I mean, how hard could that be? If the third book was popular enough to find its way into a downtown bookstand through the time-warp that was Fernandina Beach, the first two had to be falling off the shelves of Waldenbooks in Merritt Square Mall. Right?

Wrong. The inside cover listed the publisher as Berkley Books, "printed by arrangement with the author." Oh, not good. Not good at all. When I returned to Merritt Square, Walden's had nothing by the Glen Cook. Even though both earlier works were listed in their tome of published fiction, they weren't titles the store could special order. But I was told at the service desk that they sometimes carried them and might get them again if the main office decided they needed another set. It happened sometimes. Just check back every now and then. Yeah, sure.

From that point onward, finding those two books became my quest. I scoured every bookstore I came across, which was no small number. I love bookstores. I still seek them out wherever I go. Small, large, new, used, it doesn't matter. Before I had access to that miracle of '70's culture called the mall, I would peruse the five and dime, the grocery and the drugstore, or any other place that carried a selection. I still do today, much to my wife's puzzlement while we're waiting for a prescription to be filled. But I've found several books that have stuck with me in such places, "Das Boot" and "The Cross of Iron" to name two, even a novelization of Shakespeare's "Henry V" once. When we vacationed in Wales two years ago, we drove half a day out of our way to explore a town that boasted thirty-six used bookstores, just to see what the English had to offer. Worth every precious pound and moment. Next time Karen will have to pry me out.

It wasn't weeks or even months before I met with success in my self-appointed task, almost right back where I started, in a bookstore in the mall. As I went through what was by then a pro forma ritual of searching for these missing titles before moving on to greener grazing, there they both were, the first with the same burgundy spine as the third, the second in a bright yellow as if emerging from a particularly vivid dream. "A Shadow of All Night Falling" and "October's Baby." They were real. They actually existed and I had found them. The manager hadn't lied; they really did sometimes randomly restock them. I snatched them up possessively and headed for the register. Within moments, both were finally mine. I started devouring the first that very night. That was two years later.

All three books were well worth the wait. They each lived up to those initial twenty-three pages, and then some. I thought they were better in many ways than the author's signature series, which I can still remember my excitement at stumbling across in a recently opened bookshop while I was in college. Perhaps I liked this first set better because I'd had years to anticipate reading them, my appetite whetted by just that one brief taste. As with many experiences in life, some of the best get even better with anticipation. Just ask your partner.

Some people would say I am not a patient man. Most days, I'm not. I don't deal with frustration easily, nor do I long suffer situations I believe to be wrong. Some see that as impatient, which it is by any meaningful definition of the word. I am a person who has no problem stepping into a fight to defend another, even on a principle, even when someone isn't willing to defend themselves. A person who gets annoyed too easily when I think someone's prejudice is showing, intentionally or not, and am willing to point it out, often too sharply. A person who insists the cable company fix their signal, no matter how many annoyed phone calls I have to make, no matter how high in the organization I have to go. In these things I allow my emotions to rule me, probably to my detriment. It doesn't help that I'm a somewhat of a perfectionist, though you might not know it from reading my messages.

But I can also be long-term thinker and planner, a strategist who implements a five year plan to pay off the mortgage so I can live my dream. A person who can sometimes wait for the obnoxious neighbor to move out on his own without any push from me. A person who sometimes will find a central location to wait for someone I'm looking for to pass by rather than chasing around after them. A person who always brings a book anywhere I think I might have to wait. A seeming contradiction in nature that afflicts many people I've met in one way or another.

On days I berate myself for sending a message before a meticulous editing can catch all my errors in my excitement to share my creation, I remind myself of that time almost thirty years ago. I still have those novels, which have passed through the hands of many of my friends since then. Their spines are faded and cracked, their covers torn and taped together, their pages folded and yellowed. But they remain on my shelf as treasured keepsakes to be reread, if only to remind me of the rewards patience sometimes brings.

Ok, that's probably enough reminiscing. I should let the veil fall back into place before you discover what other type of OCD psychotic you might be dealing with here.

Thank you again for reading these messages despite my less than perfect editing. To paraphrase the iconic Alton Brown, I hope your own patience with them has sometimes been rewarded.


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III

Territory

Twelve years ago, one of our cats contracted cancer. During the course of her treatment, we took her to a specialist for various tests and therapies. Some days, we dropped her off at the clinic in the morning and returned to pick her up again later that afternoon. Other days she had to stay the night.

When we arrived at the clinic one evening to bring her home, a vet tech greeted us and said he would bring her right out, then disappeared through a door into the back. Five minutes went by, then ten. The clinic was always busy, so at first we didn't think much about it. After fifteen minutes we began to wonder. About that time, the same tech came out and asked me if I would come with him. "We're having trouble coaxing her out." I followed, wondering how that could be. This wasn't the first time she'd had to stay with them. Over the progression of her illness, we'd had to leave her more than once. On those occasions we had visited her each evening, much to her enjoyment and relief. She seemed to derive a great deal of reassurance from our presence even if she only sat on one of our laps while we petted her for an hour or two and read our books. During those visits, the techs had never had any trouble bringing her out.

For those who don't know, this cat's name was Felicia. I gave her that name after she didn't stop purring for the first two days she was with us, even while she slept. We took her in as a foundling, a stray kitten with four burned paws and infected bite wounds on her belly and tail crying on our doorstep. Once inside, she seemed happy and grateful to have found a sanctuary from the trials of her first three months of life.

Her arrival for me was one of those magical moments of synchronicity that we cherish for a lifetime. Days before she found us, I had been thinking of all the things I would want in a cat if I ever had one. Her disposition perfectly matched my desires, as though someone had gone down a list and checked off each item one by one. Affectionate, check. Curious, check. Playful, check. Tolerant, check. Smart, definite check. Female, check. They even threw in tactics for free, a skill she needed nearly constantly in her first few weeks with us as she defended herself and her territory against Karen's socially-challenged, resident cat. The only thing I hadn't thought about was her coloration. She was a black and tan tortoiseshell calico, a muddled mix of color I still find striking, though perhaps I may be biased. Indeed, love is often blind, or at least needs a strong, vision-correcting prescription.

Very quickly, Felicia became like a familiar to me, greeting me every morning, rubbing my leg goodbye before I left for work. She met me at the door when I returned each evening and always came to say good night before I went to sleep. She would follow me from room to room for days after I returned home from a business trip as if trying to make sure I wasn't going to abandon her again. She would come to find me anytime I made a greeting noise, a kind of high-pitched, reverse whistle. When Karen and I argued, she would sit between us, looking from one of us to the other, purring, taking neither side. She got along with all her feline companions, even the ones who didn't get along with each other. She was cautious around strangers but warmed to most people. She was never trouble at the vet. In short, she was the sweetest cat I could ever ask to share my life with.

So when I went back to the bank of cages where the clinic kept their patients while they waited to be retrieved, I was surprised to see three vet techs standing in front of an open door, all with very concerned looks on their faces. "We can't get her out," one of them said. They watched horror as I approached the cage and peered inside. Felicia was huddled as far back as she could get, crouching defensively, ready to strike out at anything or anyone who came near. Without thinking, I made my greeting call, stuck my hand inside and let her sniff it, then scooped her out without a struggle. No problem. I didn't need a leash or a carrier, I just held her in my arms as she purred. She still had the catheter strapped to her front leg from treatment, a kind of temporary kitten chemo port.

When I turned back, the techs were aghast and amazed. One of them said, "I've done this for years, and I NEVER would have stuck my hand in that cage." Talking to them, I found out she had been hissing and spitting and clawing each time they approached her cage, like she was wild or rabid. They had tried calming her, then coaxing her, and then had broken out the heavy leather gloves. They were about to resort to a neck loop when they called me in. She was completely unwilling to emerge. She was guarding her food and water bowls possessively, defending them from atop the padded sleeping mat inside her cage like Custer on his final hill. That steel enclosure had become her territory, her new home, even if cramped, cold and uncomfortable, her place of greater safety in a suddenly confusing and uncertain world.

In college, I took a course on the Holocaust. Reading the accounts of survivors, it struck me that no matter how long people endured sub-human conditions, they tended to cling to two things. The first was the people that they knew, their family, their friends, even relative strangers they recognized from their village or town. The other was the scant possessions they retained. With people they knew they shared what they had to the extent that they could, at times even when it might endanger their own survival. But if a stranger tried to take something from them, a rag, a cup, a spoon, even a space on a bunk could become worth a life or death struggle. When the camps were liberated, a few people refused to leave the setting with which they had become so intimately familiar over years of tortured existence, choosing an impoverished present over a completely unknown future. That I live in a world where such things still happen tears my heart apart.

But humans, like all mammals, like all members of the animal kingdom, fight to survive no matter how desperate their situation becomes. Survival situations change us all in unpredictable ways. Sometimes we struggle against events we perceive as threatening simply because they are unknown. There are days I have to strive to remember that when strangers act in a particular or peculiar way, as I am sure some people try to remember with me, even some who know me, or at least think that they might.

There are few instincts greater than that of defending a territory we consider to be our own. Perhaps only the imperatives to find food and water and a mate are more strongly embedded in our psyche. And there are few more touching moments than realizing that someone trusts you enough to abandon a defensible position and expose themselves to danger because they know you will keep them safe. It's a solemn trust that can be difficult to uphold, and one that I treasure being granted if only once a dozen years ago.

I hope you have someone with whom you share such a bond at least once in your life. If you are so privileged, remember to cling to them as you see each other through these increasingly unsettled times. As you do, remember to purr, to comfort one another, to remind each other that no matter what the territory in which you find yourselves that everything will be all right as long as you share that trust.


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III

Pain

When I was seventeen, I broke my patella. The details of how aren't really important to the story. But when you see a TV or film drama about a mob enforcer breaking someone's kneecap, believe that it isn't just an overly trite cliché. I've been told the pain ranks up there with childbirth and kidney stones (neither of which I'd know about), or gallstones and shingles (both of which I would). I'd rather have either of those latter two again than break another knee. These days, when I'm asked to rank my pain on a scale of 1 to 10, I have a very solid marker for what a 10 feels like. Shock and opiate-based medications can only ease so much.

What I remember most was waking up after surgery. Then, as today, the nurses wake you up, have you roll to one side and cough to make sure you actually come out from under the anesthesia, and to prevent the onset of pneumonia. Twenty-five years ago, they used much more potent anesthesia than they used today, so it was a much greater concern. I'm not sure how long I was under, but I know it takes time to wire a kneecap back together. Not even with titanium like they would use today, just good, old-fashioned, American stainless steel.

The first time the nurses roused me, I only remember feeling as though I didn't want to wake up. These Nightingales were professionals, and quite persistent, much to my annoyance. I remember following the voice of an angel out of a safe, black cave into a distant world of demonic torment. It only lasted an instant. Little did I know, that was only a trailer of the next several hours of my life.

By the second time I awoke, the anesthesia had partly worn off. This time I surfaced into a world of bright, harsh agony. I couldn't, wouldn't open my eyes. I only remember excruciating pain, being rolled onto one side and then a quick pin-prick in my hip that sent me blissfully back into a numb and darkened world.

It's the third time waking I remember most. By then, anesthesia was only memory, a distant dream beyond my comprehension. My world consisted of only a handful of sensations. The first and foremost was pain. White-hot, overwhelming pain. Pain that makes you shake like icy water just before you go into hypothermia. Sweating pain like the contraction of a bile duct trying to free a gallstone lodged within. Persistent, unending pain, like the shingles virus scraping sandpaper along the exposed nerves of your temple. Pain that cuts through the soothing darkness enveloping you like a hot wire knife through Styrofoam. Pain so overwhelming, you can't isolate its source. Pain that blocks out your senses. Sight, sound, smell, taste, all off-line.

Miraculously, my sense of touch survived. How do I know? Because through the waves of nauseating suffering, I felt a hand clasping mine. It was the only sensation I remember other than the darkness I wished would claim me. So much emotion was translated through that hand. I remember empathy. I remember warmth. I remember compassion. I remember it sharing strength. I remember it communicating caring. I remember clutching that hand like a lifeline. I remember it returning a gentle squeeze of reassurance each time mine went slack, a reminder it hadn't abandoned me. I never saw whose hand kept me from drowning in that tortuous sea of pain. My eyes remained firmly shut until two more stabs of codeine let me to slip quietly beneath the waves again.

Only later did I learn that hand belonged not to my mother as I think I expected, but to my girlfriend at the time. We didn't work out as a couple which was probably for the best. I would guess she doesn't think about that moment much, at least not as often as I do or even in the same way. She might not remember at all. I expect she probably wouldn't unless reminded.

I like to think that I was strong enough to have returned to this world even without her hand to keep me from being completely alone and awash. I'm sure I would have. My injury was not life-threatening. I know people who have been through worse. But there was so much comfort in her hand clinging to me, guiding me, helping me up again. It was a kindness I never had the opportunity to repay, a blessing I am unlikely to forget.

I am told that kittens are born deaf and blind, with only a limited sense of smell. For the first few days of their lives, theirs is a world exclusively of touch. As it may be for their last, depending on the cat. We sometimes pity them in their decline, thinking how poor their world must have become. I think that world may be a richer than we imagine, one that for them brings back fond memories of the reassuring warmth of their siblings, the comforting nuzzle of a friend's nose, and the loving caress of their mother's tongue.

When I started this message, I had hoped to relate it to the support I intended to give an old friend who was facing surgery. I had wanted to extend him the same lifeline my girlfriend gave me, a hand to anchor him in this world so that I might, perhaps selfishly, continue to enjoy his company. I found out later that my friend can't have that surgery, so our days together may be fewer than I'd hoped. I'll just have to see him through another way. That's what friends do.

But the point of this message remains the same. At the risk of sounding bromidic or banal, sometimes it is the actions we least remember that have the longest impacts on those around us, good or bad. Sometimes we need to remember our earliest days, and hold each other's hand through the trials this life offers with seemingly endless variation. And when you need it most, I hope you have a hand to guide you through the worst of your pain.


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III