Frank is Emptiness

May 15th, 2017

The VA hospital is like a labyrinth: various wings, multiple floors, rooms that have obscure purposes, hallways that dead end, signs that guide you to places where you do want to go. It is an easy building for losing your way. Most people who enter the building eventually find their way out of the hospital. Some don’t.

I went to visit Duane on Thursday. He’s in hospice. They don’t call it hospice at the VA. The section on the 8th floor of A Wing is referred to as palliative care. It means the same thing, but sounds nicer somehow. Why is it necessary to use a euphemism? I mean I wouldn’t call the hospice “Your Last Stop”, but why refer to it in a way to keep a person, probably a visitor, from thinking about death? It’s all about death.

A nurse took me to Duane’s room. He was lying in bed, talking with some guy about his pain medication. Duane was covered up completely with blankets, and he had a knit cap on his head. All I could see was his face. The nurse told him that I was there in the room with him. Then she and the man left the room.

The hospital room had the usual medical paraphernalia: monitors, an IV drip, charts. There was a note on the wall near the head of Duane’s bed that read: ” ‘Dewey’ Duane Dean”, and underneath his name it said: “We appreciate our veterans!” Next to Duane’s bed was a television screen showing some sitcom movie with Dick van Dyke. Nobody was watching the TV. It was just there babbling, providing background noise so that the silence would not be overwhelming. Some of Duane’s personal effects were nearby: a collection of pictures of Duane’s family and a couple images of Padre Pio.

I came up to Duane’s bed and said hello. He looked up at me, and he slowly extended his hand from under the covers. I took it.

Duane said, “Your hand is ice cold.”

“I’m a cold guy.”

Duane didn’t reply. He held on to my hand and dozed off. I remained standing next to his bed. It seemed strange that all I could do was hold on to his hand. I turned off the TV. I didn’t want the distraction. I watched Duane sleep fitfully. I held on to him. I raised my left hand over his head and tried to say a blessing. I watched. He slept.

Duane woke up. He looked intently at me. He asked, “How are you?”

I lied. I said, “I’m okay.” Well, I guess it’s all a matter of degree. Compared to Duane, a man with an aggressive brain tumor, I was doing great. I just didn’t feel like that. I didn’t ask Duane how he was. I don’t ask questions when I already know the answer.

Duane asked, “How’s your son?”

I wasn’t expecting Duane to ask about Hans. That threw me off. I told, “He struggles. The war didn’t do him any good,”, and I felt suddenly very sad.

Duane said, “War never does.”

Then Duane asked me, “Does he believe that God loves him?”

Another curve ball. Does Hans believe that? Do I even believe that?

I told Duane, “Hans believes that God has a purpose for him. But it’s hard for Hans, after what he did in Iraq, to believe that God loves him.”

I paused and said, “Hans did some really bad things. He will struggle to make his peace with God for the rest of his life.”

Duane said, “He’ll get through it. God will give him enough time.”

My vision blurred a bit as I pushed tears away. “I never expected to hear my son tell me about killing people.”

Duane said, “Nobody expects that. God will get you through it too.”

Will He? Maybe Duane is right. I put a lot of stock into the words of a dying man. Duane may be mistaken, but he’s at a point where he is not going to lie to me. I think that approaching death strips away all pretense. It all becomes very, very real.

It was getting too hard to stay.

“Duane, I’m going to go now.”

“Okay”, he said, as I gently released his hand.

“We’re in this together, Frank, although we came with different purposes.”

I replied, “But we will all wind up in the same place.”

“People care. That is what Church is about.”

I thought about my recent experiences with Church, and said, “Sometimes.”

Duane replied, “When we listen.”

“I’ll try to listen.”

“Okay”.

February 12th, 2017

On Friday evening, Zen Master Dae Kwang made the statement that, in order to really help another person, it is necessary to live their dream. We all live our own dreams, but that isn’t enough for us to answer the question: “How can I help?”. If I am going to do my job as a human being, then I have to live somebody else’s dream.

I have been thinking about that. It made me remember an event from many years ago, when our kids were in the Waldorf school. I was sitting with a group of parents before the start of a class play. Barb Danner, the drama teacher, spoke prior to the performance. She tried to explain why each class did a show each and every year. She said the reason for having these plays was to allow the student to slip into another person’s role. She went on to say that the school taught the kids Spanish and German for a similar reason. Barb said,

“We don’t necessarily teach Spanish and German so that the children become fluent in the languages. We teach them so that they get to experience a Latin soul or a Teutonic soul.”

That comment has echoed in my mind until this very day. It fits in well with the Zen master’s remarks. How better to live somebody’s dream than to learn their language? I had an Arabic professor at West Point who told our class that we truly know a language only when we dream in that language. I guess I never really learned Arabic that well, but I have dreamed in German, which means that at a very deep level I sometimes think and feel as a German. I have connected with that Teutonic soul.

I think that Zen Master Dae Kwang used the term “dream” specifically and on purpose. A dream isn’t real, unless you are stuck inside of it. Usually, I am stuck in mine. A dream is a narrative, a story, a way to make sense of a fundamentally irrational world. Both Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell said that human beings need this narrative, this personal myth. We need a story to keep chaos at bay. Does my story resemble reality? What does the world look like if I wake up from my dream?

Living somebody else’s dream can be beautiful. It can be exhilarating. It can also be damn scary. I can tell you that, when Hans tells me his war stories from Iraq, he is asking me to live his dream and to shake hands with the ghosts of his past. When Hannah hurts herself, I bleed with her. Many times I have gone through the looking glass with our daughter, and it’s been a bitch trying to find my way home.

But it has to be that way. I can’t help Hans or Hannah or anybody if I don’t live their dream for a while. I have feel their suffering to the extent that I can. If it is real for them, it has to be real for me. I have to know. I can know if I have a clear mind. I get a clear mind through regular practice. Time on the cushion enables me, at times, to shift from my dream to that of another person.

Zen Master Dae Kwang also cautioned that, while it is necessary to live somebody’s dream, it is also necessary to avoid getting attached to it. No kidding. That’s another place where practice is useful. Living in a bad dream takes a toll. Sitting in silence enables me to breathe deeply and slow my pounding heart. At some point I can sigh and say to myself, “It’s okay. It was only a dream.”

So, how do I help? Living in somebody else’s dream doesn’t mean that I can or should fix anything. However, I should understand what the person needs, and act accordingly. When I go to the VA Hospital and hang out with guys in psych. ward, I am living their dream. That gets pretty wild. Their dreams are consistently interesting and often tragic, but I can’t do much for these vets. I can just be there with them. I can listen to them talk, and we can sit together inside their dreams. Maybe that’s enough. At least they don’t have dream alone.

December 16th, 2016

I went to the psych. ward of the VA Hospital last night with some folks from the American Legion. We brought snacks and drinks for the residents, like we usually do. I talked with some of the vets for a while, and then I settled down into a chair next to the table that held the sodas and the cups of ice.

A nurse wheeled a guy into the break room. He was older than me; gaunt, with longish hair combed back from his forehead. His hair was streaked with grey, and his nose had been broken at one time and badly set. He had a drooping moustache and long, thin hands that trembled slightly. The man was unshaven and he looked tired. However, he smiled and greeted us.

I offered him a soda, and Sister Karen gave him a small plate of cookies. We introduced ourselves. The man in the wheelchair was named Jim.

He said, “I served in the Army. Vietnam: ’66 to ’68.”

I replied, “I was in the Army too; ’76 to ’86.”

Jim said, “Oh, that was after my time.”

I told him, “I was a helicopter pilot.”

Jim’s eyes lit up, “Really? That’s cool. Helicopter pilots saved a lot of lives in ‘Nam.”

“Well, I was in peace time. I didn’t do anything that exciting.”

Jim laughed, “Flying sounds exciting to me.”

I asked Jim, “What did you do in the Army?”

He got serious and said, “I don’t like to talk about it”, and he looked away.

I said, “My oldest boy fought in Iraq.”

Jim asked, “Is he okay?”

“Not so much. He’s talking about going back. He wants to fight alongside the Kurds. He misses the war.”

Jim looked hard at me and said, “Some men are like that.”

Jim said, “My brother came back from the war after I did. He just sat in the kitchen of my folks’ house and smoked cigarettes, and he flicked the butts on to my mother’s floor. It was just a habit he had picked up, you know? Then, one day he took a gun and shot himself in the head.”

Silence.

Jim continued, “He was the Marine. The tough guy.” Jim shook his head slowly.

Jim thought for a moment and said, “Well, maybe your son wants to do something good.” Then he paused and said quietly, “Maybe he wants to die.”

Even more quietly, I said, “Yeah, that could be.”

Jim told me, “I ran the VFW in Milwaukee for a while. Lots of guys committed suicide. They say that twenty guys do that every day. I think it’s more than that.”

Jim nibbled on a cookie from somebody else’s plate. He looked at me and said, “Well, if your son goes back there, you tell him that he’s doing a good thing. I mean with ISIS and all, he would be fighting against evil.”

Jim said, “One of my sons died a while ago. I just don’t know about it. They say it was a heart attack, but he was a forty-year-old construction worker. Do you think those guys die of heart attacks? It don’t seem right to me.”

I told him, “I’m the oldest of seven boys. Two of my brothers are dead. My father buried two of his sons. There’s nothing harder than that.”

Jim sighed. He said, “Everybody has to find their own path. You can’t choose it for them. You don’t know.”

“I don’t judge Hans. I try not to.”

Jim said, “Don’t do that. He has to find his own way. Maybe he has to go back there.”

Jim rolled his wheelchair away and watched the movie for a while. I left him alone.

It got time to leave, and I went up to Jim to say goodbye.

I said, “Well, thanks for talking with me. I’m glad that I got to meet you.”

Jim looked up from his wheelchair, and said, “I am glad that I talked with you. I learned a lot from you. You helped me to remember my brother and my son.”

I reached down and hugged him. He hugged me back. Hard.

“Good night, Jim.”

He smiled and said, “Good night.”

January 8th, 2017

“It’s a damn shame when you can’t even trust your own woman. My wife, she didn’t want me no more. She started foolin’ round with other men. Then I was foolin’ round with other women. That’s a fast way to break up a home…well, it weren’t much of home by then no how.”

Daniel and I were in the break room of the psych. ward of the VA hospital. We sat across from each other at a table that is a graveyard for old magazines. Daniel was nibbling at some popcorn that we had brought for the patients at the VA. Daniel spilled more than he ate. Daniel talked. I listened.

Daniel is an old black man. Well, he’s my age, so you can decide if that qualifies him as being old. He sat across from me in his green pajamas. He had grey flecks in his hair, and the reddest eyes I have ever seen. He looked tired, and he rambled on about his life. He was born and raised in Tupelo, Mississippi. He served in the Army at Erlangen, West Germany during the mid-seventies. He was divorced, and he was at VA because of some sort of drug abuse. Daniel spoke for a long time about his struggles and misfortunes. He was bitter, but he was also oddly clear minded about how his own actions contributed to his problems. He took some responsibility for his life.

He said, “I had plans. Shit. Didn’t none of them turn out.”

I like going to the VA psych. ward. I go there most Tuesday evenings with a small group of people from the American Legion Post #18. We bring snacks to the people staying there. Sometimes we play cards with them. Sometimes we just sit with them and talk. I usually sit and talk. Every week is different. The VA cycles these guys through quickly. It’s rare to meet the same person there two weeks in a row. The patients spend a few days in the ward, get patched up, and then they go elsewhere.

One reason that I like going to the ward is that there is no pretense. Nobody has anything left to prove. Everybody is equal in their pajamas, bathrobe, and no-slip socks. If there is a pecking order, I have not detected it. Maybe the patients don’t have time to create a hierarchy, or maybe they just don’t function well enough to do so. In any case, there is no rank and there are no titles.

The vets usually talk to me, and they are remarkably open. A few people are reclusive and I respect their wish to be alone. The ones who converse with me generally are totally upfront about why they are in the ward. It’s not rare to have a guy say to me, “I was drinking way too much”, or “Yeah, I am hooked on Percocets.” One guy spent the better part of an hour explaining to me how the doctors were tweaking his meds so that he could deal with the voices inside his head. They tell me these things so matter-of-factly, as if they were telling me, “The wall is white.” These vets have nothing to hide any more. I have found more honesty in the psych. ward than I have ever found anywhere else.

None of these guys are there because they want to be there. They are there because they had plans and “none of them turn out”. They are in the strange position of being in control of nothing and responsible for nothing. Somebody else cares for their needs and somebody else makes their decisions. Suddenly, they don’t have to do anything. Suddenly, they have the chance to just be. I don’t know, but that has to be oddly liberating; like when Paul McCartney sang on Abbey Road, “Oh, that magic feeling, nowhere to go…”.  How hard it is to just be. All these patients are on a mandatory Zen retreat. They live in the moment because they have no other options.

The veterans can be very compassionate. I guess that shouldn’t surprise me. They all wear their suffering openly like medals on uniforms. I often tell the vets about my time in the Army, and sometimes I tell them about the struggles that Hans, our oldest son, has had since he came back from the war in Iraq. The vets listen to me closely. Some of them have to leave because the topic cuts too close to their own experiences. I feel badly about that, and I try to apologize to them. They don’t blame me. Some try to comfort me when tell them about my concerns with Hans. More than one has said to me, “It will be all right, Frank. Your boy will be okay.” When they say something like that, they mean it with all their heart. Because they know. They really do know.

There is a movie called “The King of Hearts”. It is a black comedy about World War I. The story is about a French village that is about to be blown up by the Germans. The citizens of the village flee their homes, and the patients in an insane asylum escape and take up the roles of the villagers. The movie ends with the inmates of the asylum returning to their facility because the people fighting the war are too crazy for them.

I think about that movie when I go to the VA.

April 5th, 2017

I sat across from an old man last night. My friends and I had just finished setting up snacks for the patients in the psych. ward, and so I found a chair and started talking with Jerry. He had on the standard maroon pajamas and off-white bathrobe. Jerry had forgotten to fasten a couple of the buttons on his shirt. His white hair was unkempt, and his eyes looked even redder than mine. He was tired, but alert. I’m not entirely sure why he was at the VA hospital, but he didn’t seen at all confused.

We talked for over an hour. One subject led to another. We talked about addiction and rehab. We talked about transitioning from the Army to civilian life. We talked about depression. Jerry told me about his five-year-old grandson, who had died in a car crash. I told him about my two brothers who had died young. We talked about our kids. I told Jerry about Hans and his experiences with the Banditos. Jerry mentioned his quality time with some members of the Mafia.

Jerry told me that he had first come to the VA back in ’78. “Yeah, I was losing everything: my wife was leaving me, I was going to lose my job, and lose my license. I don’t where I would be if it wasn’t for this place.” He stopped, and said, “I’d probably be dead.”

It was getting late, and Jerry smiled and asked me, “So, what are you here for?”

I pointed the tables with the popcorn, fruit, and cookies. “I bring the snacks.”

Jerry looked lost for a moment, and then he said, “Oh, you bring the snacks here. I thought you were a patient. You’re not here for treatment?

“No, not yet.”

Jerry seemed uncomfortable. “I thought you were a vet.”

“I am a vet.”

“Oh, yeah. I know that. I thought you were one of us.”

He paused and rubbed his unshaven cheek. “I meant that as a compliment.”

I took it as such.

February 8th, 2017

It is rare to see the same guy in the psych. ward week after week. The third floor of the hospital is where the VA has all the inpatient psychiatric treatment. The ward has a transient population. Most of the vets come in through the emergency room, go up to the third floor, calm down and sober up, get some meds, receive some counseling, and then they go somewhere else. They might go to the “dom” (domicile), or maybe to a halfway house, or maybe home. The psych. ward is a temporary safe place where these men and women can get patched up. They are seldom there for more than a few days. So, I was surprised that Tom was still there.

Tom has white hair and a white goatee. Only his eyebrows are still dark and heavy. He’s heavyset, and he has deep, piercing eyes. He sat down at the table with me in the break room. He likes to stare, so it is difficult to look at him for long. He was talkative, but he wasn’t manic like the last time I saw him. The doctors must have tweaked his meds. It is still hard to hold a conversation with him, but it’s no longer impossible.

“You look tired”, he said to me in a concerned voice. “Are you okay?”

I find it ironic that a patient in the psych. ward needs to ask me if I am all right. I told him that I was in fact tired, but that it wasn’t a problem. Then I asked Tom, “So, how are you doing?”

“Oh, I am just getting used to being in a place where I don’t want to be. I’ve done it before. It was like this when I got drafted. Were you drafted? How old are you?”

I replied, “I’m fifty-eight.”

“Oh, you’re still a youngster. I’m sixty-five already. I was drafted into the Marines. Back in ’68. I was in from ’68 to ’70. Vietnam. It wasn’t what I thought it would be. We took blood to the Purple Heart guys. I took it to them in my veins. No, it wasn’t at all what I thought. I thought there would be more fighting, but we just brought them blood. I would have stayed a Marine longer, but they discharged me. It wasn’t what I figured.”

I thought about asking Tom what exactly he meant, but I decided against it. I’ve had these sorts of conversations before. Questions often only bring up answers that cause more confusion. I didn’t want to go down that rabbit hole.

Tom asked, “So, do you have to drive home after this?”

“What?”

“Are you driving home tonight?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, you be careful. But it doesn’t matter how careful you are, because somebody could just pull out in front of you. There are some crazy people out there. I know from when I was a Marine.”

“True.”

Then I talked to Scott. Actually, he talked to me. He had been there for a couple weeks too. His meds weren’t right, not at all. His mind and mouth were constantly moving, shifting restlessly from one topic to another. He sat down next to me, and started shoveling a bag of chips into his face, while talking continually. Crumbs and words spewed from his lips.

“Are you Charlie or Sally? I forget your name.”

“Neither.”

“Oh, okay. Yeah, I used to have these custom vans. Hot rods too. Do you like vans? I like vans.” He dropped a chip on to his faded Grateful Dead t-shirt, and then he brushed it off.

“Maybe I should take a bag of these little marshmallows.”

I told him, “Take what you want.”

“Well, there are six bags. I could take them all.”

“You should leave some of them,” I said.

“You said that I could take what I wanted,” and Scott looked at me confusedly.

“Well, yeah, but other people might want marshmallows too.”

“Okay, I’ll just take three. I’ll take some cookies too. Custom vans. I had some of those. I had to get rid of them. I don’t know about this place. They don’t know what they are doing here. Is there any soda left?”

He walked to the table with the soda, and then walked out of the break room. He found an unused wheelchair and sat down in it. He rolled himself down the hallway. He moved with a purpose.

I talked to Russ.

Russ had been quietly sitting near the wall, staring at the television. “Man on Fire” with Denzel Washington was playing loudly on the big screen. I asked him how he was.

“I’m okay”, he said without much conviction. “Do I know you?”, he asked. “Did I see you in an AA meeting?”

“Maybe twenty-five years ago.”

Russ frowned and shook his head. “No, it wasn’t that long ago. You just look familiar.”

I asked him, “So, what do you do?”

Russ kept staring ahead, and said, “I work for a tree trimming service. At least, I think I do. They haven’t fired me yet.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Two nights.”

“Are they taking good care of you?”

“Yeah,” he said softly as he gazed into the distance. “They have to adjust my meds before I can go.”

It occurred to me as I spoke with Russ that maybe he wasn’t watching the movie. He didn’t look at me. He didn’t look at anything. He just stared straight ahead.

“What will you do when you get out of here?”

Russ replied, “I guess I will go back to work, if I still have a job.”

“How long have you been with that company?”

“Twenty-four years.” He never even glanced at me.

Thoughts flow like water. Sometimes they move swiftly and surely. Sometimes they make twists and turns. Sometimes they get dammed up until they overflow and wash away everything else. Sometimes they pool in deep places, and become dark and fetid.

Tom’s thoughts always seem to flow back to a low spot on the other side of the world, to events that happened a half century ago. Something happened to him in Vietnam that changed everything for him. His mind always returns there.

Scott’s thoughts burst forth like a torrent. They rush and roar, and sweep away all order. They can’t find a valley big enough to hold and guide them. They can’t find peace.

Russ’ thoughts follow a straight and narrow channel. They flow constantly toward a point in the distance that only Russ can see. They flow toward an unknown future, a void, a raging sea.