“I’m now working on humility. That’s a tough one. But Cal inspired me.”
“Cal has inspired many.”
“Yes. Unfortunately, we can’t all be saints. You need to have some of us sinners to balance the human equation. Actually, a lot of us sinners. I would say 100,000 sinners for every saint. Those are the odds.”
He looked fatigued as a waiter cleared the table and I drank my cup of tea.
“I’m ready,” he said. “I think Kübler-Ross needs to add another to her stages of dying. After Acceptance, add Fatigue. One gets to the point of just wanting it all to end. No more goals. No more desires. No more struggles. I have no illusions of a heaven or afterlife. The ‘peace of the inanimate’ sounds pretty good to me these days.”
I put down my cup and folded my napkin.
He was nodding in his thoughts. “Strange where life brings us, isn’t it? Sort of makes you wonder what it’s all been about.”
I have often thought back to that distant lunch. We spend this short time on earth— for some, even shorter— and hardly have time to think about our lives as we’re living them. And then, seemingly suddenly, seventy years, or eighty years, or thirty-seven years, and it’s over before we know it, and we depart like Jerald, wondering what it was all about. He was just more witty and entertaining than most, and perhaps more self-insightful. But then maybe not. I suspect most of us die strangers to ourselves.
• • •
Steve had been impressed that Jerald and I were friends in high school. That was Jerald’s recollection; I would have said we had a few classes together. He was eager to hear how our lunch went after I waddled back to the office, slumping into my desk chair and renouncing food forever.
“He really is one of our largest donors,” said Steve.
“I know. He told me. Several times.”
“And he’s not as much of a jerk as he likes to pretend. He not only makes large donations to the organization, but he’s also personally paid for others’ meds when they couldn’t afford them. Cal knows that if there’s someone in need of help, he can call on Jerald. Are you going to get together again?”
“Probably. But not to eat, I hope.”
And we did get together every few weeks as I checked in on how he was doing. One of the last times was in Providence Hospital a couple of months later. I was with Janet, his sister, at his bedside. Jerald had been largely unconscious for the past two days. It was growing late and, at my urging, she’d finally left to go back to her family. “I’ll call if anything happens,” I promised her. By then I had kept a number of these solo vigils and made a number of calls when something had finally “happened.”
I sat in his room, reading, remembering, reflecting on this old, withered man who was my age as I listened to his raspy breathing, and I could still recognize the handsome boy from high school. It seemed like only yesterday. Then around 4:00 a.m., I was dozing when I heard a stirring and jerked awake, opening my eyes just as Jerald was opening his, both of us groggy. He looked around the dimly lit room, appearing confused. Seeing me, he asked, “Am I in heaven?”
“No. Providence Hospital.”
“Thank God. I would have been seriously disappointed if this were heaven.”
“Would you like some water?”
He nodded. I held the cup as he sucked from a straw, then smacked his lips. “Well, since I’m not in heaven, I might as well eat. I’m hungry for once. See what they have on the menu, will you?”
“Jerald, this is a hospital, not a hotel.”
“At what they’re charging me, I can order whatever I want whenever I want it.”
“I think you have a little more work to do on the humility bit.”
“Oh, fuck humility. What good did it ever do me anyway? By the way, what are you doing here? You’re not family or any of my many fawning beneficiaries.”
“I just happened to be in the neighborhood.”
“You just happened to be in the neighborhood. I find that hard to believe.”
“And I had nothing better to do on a Saturday night.”
“Now that I would believe.”
“Screw you. So maybe I just wanted to see an old friend off.”
He suddenly teared up, his bottom lip quivering, and he whispered, “Now that I would believe, too. Thank you.”
Feeling our combined embarrassment at his emotion, I rose from my chair. “I’ll go see what they can rustle up around here at four in the morning.”
“Yes, do,” he said as he dabbed his eyes with the top of his sheet. “Use my name. Tell them I tip big.”
He died a week later at home, between one caregiver’s leaving and the next caregiver’s arrival, several weeks after Cal. Saint and sinner. In the end, they die the same.
• • •
There’s a coda to this memory. It was a number of months later, in early September, that I was at the front desk helping our receptionist Connie prepare files for an upcoming county audit, when we heard the familiar ping! of the elevator and Brandon Chittock stepped out from its doors. I would have bristled had he not appeared as he did— dark circles around his eyes, obviously hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, disheveled, dressed in wrinkled shirt and slacks looking like he’d slept in them. He was shattered. He came to the front desk and asked for “the priest who works here. I’ve forgotten his name.” He didn’t meet my eyes. Either he didn’t remember me, or was too ashamed to remember me.
“Father Paul,” said Connie.
“Yes, Father Paul.”
“I’ll see if he’s available.”
Father Paul came out from Client Services and greeted him warmly as an old friend, and they went into a counseling room. Connie and I had just finished the files an hour later when they emerged. Clearly Chittock had been crying; his eyes were puffy and red, but he was now calm, his posture once again erect; he was back in control of his emotions, if no longer in control of the universe. Father Paul walked him to the elevator where they exchanged final words and shook hands. Once the elevator doors closed, Father Paul turned and saw me staring. He walked over and said, “Yes.”
All my rage and detestation for the man had drained away. I whispered, “He’s become infected?”
“No. Not Brandon. His partner.”
He handed me an envelope. “You might be interested in this. Then perhaps you’d give it to Franklin.”
I opened the envelope and peered inside. It contained a personal check for $100,000. I looked back up at Father Paul.
He said softly, “It’s his time.”
Chapter Seven
Premonitions of the Past
[Bogong High Plains, April 1986]
“I was lost out here once.”
I looked up from my book. “Oh?”
Gray was staring into the fire. “About this time of day. Sun going down. I was maybe ten or eleven.”
It was April, early autumn in the antipodes, bringing an early chill to the night. We each had a mug of hot milk tea as dusk settled around us. He said nothing further, so I went back to reading a history of Australia’s European beginnings, as the dumping ground for England’s convicts and political undesirables. “Between