One Favor, Lord, If You Have a Moment

I’ve been seeing doctors lately, which is okay by me. I am a triumph of modern medicine, an 83-year-old with an adolescent pig valve in my heart and when you imagine how many pigs must’ve given their lives before science got that procedure figured out, pigs who gave up their chance at a rich full life and the pleasure of parenthood, it obliges me not to spend my bonus years watching sitcoms. But thanks to medicine, I received extra time to make several serious mistakes and have the chance to recover.

I am very fond of doctors. Competence is admirable, especially when it’s for your own personal benefit. I like to write limericks for them, such as the neurologist Matthew Fink:

I sit in the waiting room and in five minutes I can write a pretty decent one:

What better thing to do while sitting and looking at your fellow patients and not allowing yourself to ask, “What’s wrong with you?”

I feel pretty good and sometimes terrific even as I am slowly falling apart. I was in the hospital for eyelid surgery a few weeks ago and came under the ministrations of heroic nurses, a cult of kindness and patience. Lying miserable in the night, alarmed by thoughts of losing my sight and the world becoming a blank page, I pressed the red buzzer button and heard gentle footsteps and a kind soul said, “How can I help?”

Good Lord, it was a man. Someone from my gender of hockey players slamming opponents into the boards, but instead he dripped saline drops into each burning eye. I didn’t tell him I was miserable; I could tell from the gentleness of his hand and voice that he knew.

Tennessee Williams said, “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” And so do we all.

In the annals of human suffering, surgery post-op doesn’t rank high, but I feel aligned with my beloved old relatives who slipped away. I was a busy achiever, I was not a comforter, I had no time for hand-holding. I grieve for Jimmy, Bruce, Roger, Lynn, Freddy, who died young, the lives unlived. I pray for my dependents.

I ask a favor of God, that I not die a dumb death. Let me leave in dignity, please. Tennessee Williams strangled to death, swallowing a bottle cap. My friend Barry Halper, 21, driving to start his first radio job east of St. Paul early one morning, looked away from the road — to turn on the radio? To reach for the cigarette lighter? — and crashed into the rear of a school bus. Dead. Gone. An only child. At the funeral, I sat next to his mother, her arms around me, sobbing on my shoulder.

I imagine myself walking along Amsterdam Avenue one sunny afternoon, not noticing the bike lane, and a delivery man on a fast electric bicycle kills me. He’s carrying a half-gallon container of my favorite pasta of all time, orecchiette alla barese with sausage and broccoli, tomato sauce, garlic, parmesan. My body is thrown into a No Parking zone, covered with pasta sauce. Even though unconscious, I can smell it.

A woman dashes out and feels for my pulse and there is none. Passersby pause and then continue. The delivery man leaves quietly with his bicycle. A squad car pulls over and sees an elderly man who apparently ate too much. No billfold in his pocket. The delivery guy took it and is on the phone a few blocks away, buying himself a one-way ticket to Rome on my Visa card. First class, why not.

His girlfriend works at a bank nearby. Between the two of them they clean out my checking account of thirty thou. After all, it was traumatic for him too.

Keep me on the sidewalk and out of the bike lane, Lord. Don’t let me die covered in tomato sauce. Let me finish up today in good style and then we’ll talk about tomorrow.