In form and moving how express and admirable, In action how like an Angel
I alluded earlier to how my father met him–his empty office, few patients…..so they played stud poker to pass the time. His picture is on my gallery page. He was perpetually tan, unremarkable in some ways (he had a thick ‘Pennsylvania Dutch’ accent), but he was exceptionally handsome. Women wanted to meet him, men wanted to hang with him. My mother once said she caught him giving her the once-over at a formal affair–it was the greatest compliment she ever had as a woman.
By the mid-sixties, he stopped taking new patients. He was known as a peerless diagnostician, so respected by his peers that he rose to leadership in the local hospital and local AMA. His office was a converted house, one RN/receptionist directed traffic. Because of our relationship to him, she often shared information that few knew. The waiting room overflowed, and the television seemed to be always showing “The Edge of Night” (and no one was watched). On the right side was a small room where he dispensed drugs and gave terrified children and sick adults injections.
A door connected to his office, a huge room with wood paneling, crammed bookshelves, small windows, and a solid mahogany desk that looked 10 feet long. A large (perpetually-filled) ashtray 10 inches wide sat beside his phone. At least three cigarettes were smoking on the sides, lit briefly and forgotten. On the bookshelf, a large red sign read: “I do not recommend my patients smoke cigarettes”.
I’d run in (even when sick) and sit in a cherry and leather chair beside the desk. A cloud of smoke perpetually floated over my head. He’d be on the phone, typically telling someone that they were free to disregard his advice, he would visit them at the cemetery. His mouth would turn slightly upward at the sight of me, the way Neil Young smiles. My heart sang like a bird in spring. That smile was just for me. His eyes were deep blue, serene and gentle. The call ended, and he’d grin, asking questions about school and my life. I knew that with him on my side, I could never be sick for long. And though my home life was a sewage pit, somehow he was pulling for me and I could not let this man down.
And yes, he made house calls. I’m in my jammies and my life was suddenly in roses. He carried a huge leather bag that could hold a baby hippo or a basket of kumquats. All sorts of pills, liquids, and instruments of malfeasance stared out at you. Every Christmas, I got a personal visit with a card and a gift certificate. He’d collapse into a chair and exhale the sorrows and pain of a thousand patients as mom made coffee.
While I was not so naive to think his healing smile was only cast upon my head, the last time I saw him in the 80’s, he unloaded his predictions about the future of medical care in the US (it all came true, of course). I know he realized my father had laid waste to everything he touched. Now, my godfather’s eyes were awash in a million sadnesses, tragedies, and fatalities. Or maybe all of it pulled him magnetically to the 1950’s, as a young doctor watched his beautiful bride die one drop, one minute at a time.
Like that wife, cancer took him, la candle in a typhoon. His grave still reminds me of the gallant captain of my soul. My tears can never be enough.
All Good things never last………
11/23: An early Christmas present! A nice gentleman at the Laureldale cemetery gave me a key to the mausoleum so I can visit my godfather any time. Poor wife has to listen to me racked with sobs, like someone was tearing my skin open. But it’s cleansing. Someone’s gotta remember him, right?