[Note: my new book of essays, Beneath the Turning Stars, is now available on Amazon and Kindle]
It was unexpected, as these things often go. A friend of mine from the old days had learned that she had cancer and needed an operation. She had moved throughout her life and had no long-term friends in the area, and for whatever reason her family members were unavailable, and so it fell to me. Suddenly, I was in the position to fly out to eastern Washington State on a complicated series of flights of many hours to be a driver and a helper. Suddenly, I was going to end up in Spokane (pronounced “can” at the end) of all places, just a few days after getting back from the Dakotas. I looked longingly at my regular bed even before the flight, but such is life, or the whims of the gods - or the workings of the Great Design, causing everything to fall into place as easily as a child playing with a simple set of blocks.
It seemed a mere whim at first when we checked into the hospital. Nerves, protocol, visits from everyone from the anesthesiologist to the assistant nurse, signing of papers, injections, more nerves, and then the last good-bye, myself in relief and the patient in the unbelievable position of hanging between life and death. Shockingly, she was supposed to be released later that afternoon, and I had come prepared only with an extra jacket and a tee-shirt in case it got cold. Silly me. Just as the gurney was being rolled out, the surgeon made it imperative, all of a sudden, that she would spend the night. But of course, and as she disappeared into the maze of gleaming clinical tile and steel, probably making amends to her maker, I began to worry about me. Damn. Hopefully a nearby hotel; hopefully a place nearby to get something to eat; and, hopefully someone had those little kits for the stupid traveler – me – that allowed him to brush and shave and smell like chemical flowers under his armpits.
The hotel came easily and somewhat cheaply with the hospital discount. Fast food abounded in the area. But, somehow ignoring the hospital gift shop (where I later found had the things I needed), I was hard pressed to find toiletries. The hotel did not have them, and all the shops in the area carried only food and drink for the hospital workers. Everyone else, it seemed, always remembered their necessaries, and so it was left to me to travel around Spokane on foot to find a pharmacy, anyplace, that might fill my need.
Spokane is built on several steep hills that once abounded with ponderosa pine amid high-prairie pasture. Since, in Gringo America (not Latin America), the finer parts of cities are built on the hills, and the poorer houses and commercial strip malls are in the valley, or down- town, I naturally head down to find what I would soon so desperately need. After bypassing the massive Sister Joseph Hospital, I went down, down, down uncomfortable declines (that would become very uncomfortable inclines later on), crossing highways and intersections in places that were built almost exclusively for cars. Finally, I saw neon signs amidst a flattening out, and at last I was able to set my compass on a Seven Eleven a quarter mile distant.
At first I was relieved that I would not have to walk around a strange city past dark, but in those last few hundred yards, my relief turned into tense concern. At first it was only one – one homeless man probably in his thirties, sitting in his bundle of filthy clothes on a curb wearing an extremely odd feather and fur long-brimmed hat. He had a beaten guitar in his lap and a cardboard sign clumsily upheld by his feet pleading for alms. Remembering my city survival skills, I began to curve away from him and then thought – ah, what the hell, I’ll give the poor devil a few bucks. Before I could reach him, however, I saw the others: a pimp and his prostitute, an almost good-looking woman deeply flawed by a look of incredible hardness, and all those others, men mostly but some women, sitting, smoking, pulling on oversized cans of beer, reeking even from a distance of urine. Some looked lost, but others looked predatory, and all had the wasted and hopeless aura of the junky; skinny, jittery, eyes darting, life a living hell without the help of the illusory paradise of heroin.
I did not give my pathetic alms, afraid I would be mobbed by the others. Instead, I walked past them all to the Seven Eleven and found a toothbrush and toothpaste. All was too expensive, so I settled on only those, for my own sense of cleanliness. I would shower in the morning to reduce my odor, and look cool with my day-plus growth of beard (old men do not look cool with bristles. Instead, they look dirty, but I can pretend and save a few bucks). That decided, I stood in line to check out among suspicious city dwellers, and then carried my little plastic bag with toothbrush and paste past the motley crowd and up the hill. Dusk was settling in, and I was relieved to make it past the hospital and into the safety of the hotel without one of those all-too-common incidences that happen in certain areas of nearly every city.
The hospital area was safe, though, and later that night I returned to check in on the recovering patient before finding myself again in an unfamiliar bed. Next morning, I did the same, and as the friend went back into a deep, drug-tinted sleep, I headed out for a morning walk – up the hill. The hotel was on Rockwood Blvd, and sure enough, as soon as I got out of range of the hospital, the nice housing began. Actually, it was not just “nice housing;” it was mansion country, mansions that had been built, it looked, between the 1930’s and 50’s, which were surrounded by massive conifers and maples; beautiful mansions built mostly of stone or brick, but also of wood, sometimes of cedar and redwood that is now so precious and scarce.
Beautiful and quiet, too, although I knew that troubles still happened within them. Still, although only a few miles from the junkies, they were so far removed in style that we might think of them as part of another country. A Marxist would jeer at this wealth, but I suspect that most of these mansions belonged to professionals, surgeons and upper-level management, people who had worked hard for their possessions; people who had passed over the instant glory of certain seductive drugs to get stuff done.
And we should be glad that they did. The Hospital of Sister Joseph – I don’t know if that’s its real name, but it should be – was begun in the early 1880’s by said Sister Joseph after she had turned 63 years of age. She had planned and administered and even helped build the hospital for miners and Indians alike, and it has grown into both a monster and a regional gem. My experience there was unexpected. From youth, I had been used to hospitals filled with Nurse Rachets running a tight, military-like ship, and aloof, god-like doctors. Here, in a hospital filled with crucifixes and Virgin Mary statues, everyone was treated like a person who mattered. I have no idea if this was because of the still-religious backdrop of the hospital or new training, but it was startling and humanizing all at once. If it had been me being operated on, I would have feared the pain and the mortality of it, but not the coldness that many hospitals radiate. I am sure that the Rachets and the gods still exist there, but these forces are muted by the greater force to help and heal,
It is here in the hospital where we find middle earth, between the heaven of luxury and wealth and the misery of addiction and poverty. This is our earth potential, for we will forever have differences of wealth and well-being amongst us, as Jesus said, due to decisions made as well as circumstances beyond our control, but this can all be ameliorated by the startling notion that care is essential for everyone, and can be given to everyone. In this, the inevitable pains and sorrows of life can be tempered to make it all human, and indeed, as some suspect, make even the pains of life experiences for growth.
Not that this is easy. I did not stop to help in any way the junkies at the bottom of the hill. Instead, I avoided them like the plague, and looked upon them almost as another race. I had thought of the old Christian expression then, to “look upon every face as the face of Jesus,” and I knew that I could not. It takes someone better than I, someone more sensitive and perhaps better trained, to do this, and I know where some of them live. Some of them live at the top of the hill in big mansions, whose ownership is far beyond my own means, and I don’t resent it one bit. But some of them might also live at the bottom of the hill, trapped by their own poor decisions. It is only those who care who can ever bring this inner grace out again, and I am both grateful and surprised – as usual – that such people exist. A hint, although not proof, that a greater force does indeed exist to guide us, even as we fail ourselves. FK
It was unexpected, as these things often go. A friend of mine from the old days had learned that she had cancer and needed an operation. She had moved throughout her life and had no long-term friends in the area, and for whatever reason her family members were unavailable, and so it fell to me. Suddenly, I was in the position to fly out to eastern Washington State on a complicated series of flights of many hours to be a driver and a helper. Suddenly, I was going to end up in Spokane (pronounced “can” at the end) of all places, just a few days after getting back from the Dakotas. I looked longingly at my regular bed even before the flight, but such is life, or the whims of the gods - or the workings of the Great Design, causing everything to fall into place as easily as a child playing with a simple set of blocks.
It seemed a mere whim at first when we checked into the hospital. Nerves, protocol, visits from everyone from the anesthesiologist to the assistant nurse, signing of papers, injections, more nerves, and then the last good-bye, myself in relief and the patient in the unbelievable position of hanging between life and death. Shockingly, she was supposed to be released later that afternoon, and I had come prepared only with an extra jacket and a tee-shirt in case it got cold. Silly me. Just as the gurney was being rolled out, the surgeon made it imperative, all of a sudden, that she would spend the night. But of course, and as she disappeared into the maze of gleaming clinical tile and steel, probably making amends to her maker, I began to worry about me. Damn. Hopefully a nearby hotel; hopefully a place nearby to get something to eat; and, hopefully someone had those little kits for the stupid traveler – me – that allowed him to brush and shave and smell like chemical flowers under his armpits.
The hotel came easily and somewhat cheaply with the hospital discount. Fast food abounded in the area. But, somehow ignoring the hospital gift shop (where I later found had the things I needed), I was hard pressed to find toiletries. The hotel did not have them, and all the shops in the area carried only food and drink for the hospital workers. Everyone else, it seemed, always remembered their necessaries, and so it was left to me to travel around Spokane on foot to find a pharmacy, anyplace, that might fill my need.
Spokane is built on several steep hills that once abounded with ponderosa pine amid high-prairie pasture. Since, in Gringo America (not Latin America), the finer parts of cities are built on the hills, and the poorer houses and commercial strip malls are in the valley, or down- town, I naturally head down to find what I would soon so desperately need. After bypassing the massive Sister Joseph Hospital, I went down, down, down uncomfortable declines (that would become very uncomfortable inclines later on), crossing highways and intersections in places that were built almost exclusively for cars. Finally, I saw neon signs amidst a flattening out, and at last I was able to set my compass on a Seven Eleven a quarter mile distant.
At first I was relieved that I would not have to walk around a strange city past dark, but in those last few hundred yards, my relief turned into tense concern. At first it was only one – one homeless man probably in his thirties, sitting in his bundle of filthy clothes on a curb wearing an extremely odd feather and fur long-brimmed hat. He had a beaten guitar in his lap and a cardboard sign clumsily upheld by his feet pleading for alms. Remembering my city survival skills, I began to curve away from him and then thought – ah, what the hell, I’ll give the poor devil a few bucks. Before I could reach him, however, I saw the others: a pimp and his prostitute, an almost good-looking woman deeply flawed by a look of incredible hardness, and all those others, men mostly but some women, sitting, smoking, pulling on oversized cans of beer, reeking even from a distance of urine. Some looked lost, but others looked predatory, and all had the wasted and hopeless aura of the junky; skinny, jittery, eyes darting, life a living hell without the help of the illusory paradise of heroin.
I did not give my pathetic alms, afraid I would be mobbed by the others. Instead, I walked past them all to the Seven Eleven and found a toothbrush and toothpaste. All was too expensive, so I settled on only those, for my own sense of cleanliness. I would shower in the morning to reduce my odor, and look cool with my day-plus growth of beard (old men do not look cool with bristles. Instead, they look dirty, but I can pretend and save a few bucks). That decided, I stood in line to check out among suspicious city dwellers, and then carried my little plastic bag with toothbrush and paste past the motley crowd and up the hill. Dusk was settling in, and I was relieved to make it past the hospital and into the safety of the hotel without one of those all-too-common incidences that happen in certain areas of nearly every city.
The hospital area was safe, though, and later that night I returned to check in on the recovering patient before finding myself again in an unfamiliar bed. Next morning, I did the same, and as the friend went back into a deep, drug-tinted sleep, I headed out for a morning walk – up the hill. The hotel was on Rockwood Blvd, and sure enough, as soon as I got out of range of the hospital, the nice housing began. Actually, it was not just “nice housing;” it was mansion country, mansions that had been built, it looked, between the 1930’s and 50’s, which were surrounded by massive conifers and maples; beautiful mansions built mostly of stone or brick, but also of wood, sometimes of cedar and redwood that is now so precious and scarce.
Beautiful and quiet, too, although I knew that troubles still happened within them. Still, although only a few miles from the junkies, they were so far removed in style that we might think of them as part of another country. A Marxist would jeer at this wealth, but I suspect that most of these mansions belonged to professionals, surgeons and upper-level management, people who had worked hard for their possessions; people who had passed over the instant glory of certain seductive drugs to get stuff done.
And we should be glad that they did. The Hospital of Sister Joseph – I don’t know if that’s its real name, but it should be – was begun in the early 1880’s by said Sister Joseph after she had turned 63 years of age. She had planned and administered and even helped build the hospital for miners and Indians alike, and it has grown into both a monster and a regional gem. My experience there was unexpected. From youth, I had been used to hospitals filled with Nurse Rachets running a tight, military-like ship, and aloof, god-like doctors. Here, in a hospital filled with crucifixes and Virgin Mary statues, everyone was treated like a person who mattered. I have no idea if this was because of the still-religious backdrop of the hospital or new training, but it was startling and humanizing all at once. If it had been me being operated on, I would have feared the pain and the mortality of it, but not the coldness that many hospitals radiate. I am sure that the Rachets and the gods still exist there, but these forces are muted by the greater force to help and heal,
It is here in the hospital where we find middle earth, between the heaven of luxury and wealth and the misery of addiction and poverty. This is our earth potential, for we will forever have differences of wealth and well-being amongst us, as Jesus said, due to decisions made as well as circumstances beyond our control, but this can all be ameliorated by the startling notion that care is essential for everyone, and can be given to everyone. In this, the inevitable pains and sorrows of life can be tempered to make it all human, and indeed, as some suspect, make even the pains of life experiences for growth.
Not that this is easy. I did not stop to help in any way the junkies at the bottom of the hill. Instead, I avoided them like the plague, and looked upon them almost as another race. I had thought of the old Christian expression then, to “look upon every face as the face of Jesus,” and I knew that I could not. It takes someone better than I, someone more sensitive and perhaps better trained, to do this, and I know where some of them live. Some of them live at the top of the hill in big mansions, whose ownership is far beyond my own means, and I don’t resent it one bit. But some of them might also live at the bottom of the hill, trapped by their own poor decisions. It is only those who care who can ever bring this inner grace out again, and I am both grateful and surprised – as usual – that such people exist. A hint, although not proof, that a greater force does indeed exist to guide us, even as we fail ourselves. FK
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