Time to Go to Sea

As I recall from Freshman Honors Literature, in 1979, Ishmael of "Moby Dick" knew it was time to go to sea when he realized he was spending too much time dwelling on the sadness of life on land, lingering at funerals, as I think he said.

Maybe I need to go to sea.

Yesterday I went over to JMH to sign up a new client, and wandered over to see Dr. Barry in the Pediatric ICU. Now, this is never the cheeriest of places, but yesterday things seemed pretty quiet. I asked Barry to go to lunch but he declined --a new patient was coming to the unit. Sure enough, I watched as a beautiful 11 year old girl was wheeled in, following a hysterectomy. She had cervical cancer!

Due to the state of the art treatment at JMH, she has a decent prognosis. But still -- I thought about that girl all afternoon.

On my way home, Wifey cheered me up with a story about some folks who live about 10 minutes from us. Wifey's friend told her the tale. Apparently, the family's 21 year old son, a happy, normal young man who was having some academic problems, but seemingly nothing more serious, killed himself.

And he did it by hanging himself from a large tree in front of the family home. His father discovered his son as he left for work. I don't know these folks, and I happily didn't witness the event, but I spent last evening mentally picturing, and trying to understand, that family's grief and misery.

It reminded me of a suicide I heard about years back, involving one of Wifey's distant relatives. The victim in that case was also a young man who had a tortured relationship with his father, a rather gruff Holocaust Survivor. The son mailed a letter to his father, and then killed himself. The letter arrived several days later, and the father opened it. It was a blank sheet of paper.

As I said --I need to stop dwelling on these examples of sadness and misery.

Yesterday did have a highlight. While I was having lunch, at an outdoor restaurant, an enormous man walked by. He looked like William "The Refrigerator" Perry. Although he was just walking, and it was rather cool and shady, he was covered in sweat. A pretty young Latina at the next table looked up as he passed, and said, with perfect sarcasm "Wow --now THAT'S attractive."

I overheard her, our glances met, and we both started laughing uncontrollably. It was one of those exquisite laugh attacks, like the ones that occur in junior high school, where you're trying not to laugh, and it just comes out.

Of course, it was cruel to laugh at this fellow's obesity, but it was just one of those things. Also, he didn't seem like a sad type at all --he was strutting, as a matter of fact, which made things funnier.

Anyway, the Latina left, as did I, both of us still chuckling.

Maybe life on land isn't all about sadness.