Words

When I was twelve years old, a man died 15 feet in front of my family.

It was our hometown, the Village of Kenmore’s, 75th anniversary celebration parade. The parade was stopped momentarily, as parade’s often are, and a reserve unit, I think, but of men in their 30s and 40s, was standing at attention with their flags and real or wooden white rifles in front of us, waiting to proceed with their marching.

One of them just smashed face first on the asphalt.

His body jackknifed straight forward, knees not even buckling, his shiny helmet making a resoundless thud with his head still in it.

The other men around him did their best to remain at attention, but I could feel their fear and worry agitating. Some broke rank of course to turn to the man who had fallen; and a few spectators ran into the street to help, including a woman next to us. I don’t remember what happened – I assume an ambulance came and took him away – but then the parade continued.

When the woman who had been next to us returned back onto the curb she told her companion, “We lost him…”

I turned to my dad.

“Did he die?”

“No! No!! He didn’t die!”

My father was visibly shaken that such a fact would be made real with words.

But the man had died, in front of my father’s family.



This morning my father had surgery to drain and help save his bad eye. I called this afternoon to ask how it went, and he sounded good and said it had gone fine.

Then he told me that my sister, who is having a cancer scare, is going to be biopsied next week to check for metastasizing. They are optimistic, just checking.

My sister had asked my father to tell me not to call her. At work she sent an email to all her co-workers telling then not to mention it to her.

Even my sister is so afraid of showing emotion, at a time she deserves to most.


And when my mother told me, for the first time, two months afterwards, that my scheduled four-hour operation stretched out to nine hours because my blood pressure tanked and they had to do angioplasty to continue, and the surgeon’s first words to them in the waiting room afterwards was, “well, he’s stable now."

All I could come out with was, “I’m sorry…”