I discovered faith at the age of 8 when I woke up from sleeping in my Mom’s lap in church to hear Father Michael give a sermon about the temptation of Jesus by Satan and about Jesus exorcising the demons. I was at that age when I wanted to believe in devils that did wicked things, monsters that crept around in the dark and worse things from beyond. The stuff of a boy’s dark fantasy.
My faith lasted about ten years and was lost, I thought forever, in a frozen field in Korea under waves of little Chinamen who wore sneakers in the snow. Who just kept coming even when they had no guns. Who we kept killing until they fell upon us, digging us out of our holes, killing us with their knives as we struggled to fight them off. They were a sea of angry humanity and swept over and around us, consuming us in their mass. Fighting them off was like struggling with the ocean, and when they moved on, those few of us alive crawled out of our holes and limped back to our lines. Limped past the Chinese, who we had killed and who killed us. Who laughed at us or ignored us. As if we were walking dead men of no significance. The stuff of a grown man’s nightmares.
I didn’t believe in God anymore, although my survival might have seemed a miracle. I couldn’t find faith again, not after that, not for over 50 years. Didn’t even look for it. Not even when my wife, withered by cancer that eventually claimed her, prayed for me and promised me I would see her in paradise one day. Not then. Faith was too hard to believe in, to hard to see. It took face of the Devil to give me my faith back, but by then it was too late.
I only know what I saw at the end. I get easily confused these days. At 75,I’m entitled to little lapses. I don’t think I’m getting senile, it’s only my body that’s wearing out. Arthritis, shortness of breath, creaking bones and phlegm. I walk a lot slower than I used to. Sometimes I use an old bamboo cane. I’ve lost my steam even if I’m still pissed off about a lot of things. I’m pissed off that I’ve lived in the same town almost my entire life. I’m pissed that all my friends are dead, my wife is dead, and my daughter never finds the time to visit her father or that grandchild, the only thing that loser husband ever gave her.
When you’re old some things you don’t forget, and even if you don’t have the will to show rage, like you did when you were young, it doesn’t mean you don’t feel its flavor in your mouth.
Except for a few years in Korea and a few years in med school I spent my entire life in this village. Once it was all farms, now there are a couple of factories over farm land too expensive to keep. It is still a beautiful place, of rolling hills and apple trees and cows, of lakes and streams. A small town that has grown but hasn’t completely lost itself. The Majestic Theatre closed and was replaced by the Loews multiplex in near-by Carmel. I saw the drive-in come with the car and go with video-cassette. I’ve seen the town grow to three times it was when I was child, stealing berries from Ms. Paul my neighbor, and fishing in the lake for bass and pike. The town grew and the fish died. The graveyard seems to have grown faster than the town, and I walk through its older parts, among the abandoned graves, covered with ivy and weeds. I remember their names. I know that soon there will be a stone here with my name. Given a generation or two, I too would be forgotten.
It’s the way of things, the process of age and forgetfulness. The relentlessness of time. God’s desire that our time here be brief. Yet he doesn’t seem to want to let me go. That or he wishes to prolong my pain. I know that good Christians believe in a loving and forgiving God. Even now, I find it hard to believe.
I have always lived tainted by death, it’s a family trait. My family has run the local funeral business now for four generations. The business went to my brother Wallis when my father died, I continued as local pathologist. That was after med school, after Korea. After the urgings of Frank, who was worried about me and helped steer me back to the living.
It was Frank who asked the question, “What would do to escape this process of aging?” We were playing chess, talking grey thoughts about aging and our friends who had died, the inevitably of the end, and how damn awful it was to have not had the time to do so much more.
We grew up in the shade of the same trees, swimming in the big lake. I met my wife, Alice, through his girlfriend and he stood besides me as she walked down the aisle. He became a doctor because he was good. He was his nature. He was a responsible man, a dedicated man. Perhaps it was natural that he would love it too much to let it go so easy, to surrender to the fates, to the will of God.
I never had the love of it like he did. I went to medical school on the GI Bill when I came home from those frozen fields because there was nothing else for me to do. I never wanted to practice it to help people. Maybe it was the taint of death, a sense of being cursed to feel death under your fingernails. I didn’t want the responsibility of caring for the living, not after coming to terms with the other side so well.
I wanted to be left alone with my wife. Alice brought joy back into my life with her enthusiasm, her tenderness for me who deserved none of that. She persevered under my coldness and because she was so damn persistent with me, I let her inside, to find the parts of me that I hid from others. She was the one who made me laugh. She understood our daughter who was going through things I had no inkling of, which I never took the time to understand. But Alice died very young, when my daughter was only a teenager. A malignant tumor in her ovaries. She wasn’t supposed to die first, but life throws you a curve. She passed away because that’s what God wanted. Left me alone with a daughter It’s a joke that God plays. In the end, love always causes suffering.
My daughter in the city, raising her own child, making the same mistakes I did. Our sins come back to haunt us, sometimes reborn in our children. When my drinking got too much, the hospital gently told me to leave. I didn’t care. So I returned to the death business, working with Wallis at the funeral home, sometimes for the local police department as medical examiner. Wallis died of a sudden heart attack, leaving daughters who’d been married off. The business fell to my hands, which I continue to run to support myself and his widow. When I am gone, the business will be sold and his widow will get the remains.
