I would have made a great alcoholic. I was actually quite good at it. There came a moment when I looked at the condition square in the eye and said, "It's you or me, friend; what's it gonna be?" and walked away clean. I'm not sure why, but there was always a part of me that said, "You're not giving up; not yet, goddamnit."
I was a passible social drinker, and I still am, although I can get silly and loud at parties, but my forte was sitting in a dark corner of Scrooges or George Street, ordering one after another until my mind opened up and let me feel--everything and the darkness flowed in.
"Don't you really want to be a doctor, buddy?"
That was my dad's plan. The first Campbell with an MD. My golden boy nephew will soon be the first Ph.D. in several generations. Daddy was always in a bit of denial that I could barely read or speak or do the math. I barely got my BBA; my getting an MD would have taken an act of God. Maybe he knew something I didn't, though. I can read fairly well now--if still a bit slowly, and math fascinates me. My speaking voice replaced stuttering with a paralyzed vocal chord, but as long as I have a keyboard, I can speak as well as anyone, sometimes better.
Healing the hurt was probably always my plan. It's always been something I spent most of my time doing. Making a living of it as an actual healer might have been nice. I have friends who are doctors, and I sometimes really admire what they do. Sometimes they amaze me. So long as my patients got better, I would have been really happy and really satisfied. Patients don't always get better, though. Sometimes you do your best, sometimes they do their best, and it still ends in suffering and loss. Dealing with that would have made my drinking much worse. Dealing with fighting the suffering of others and failing would have made me look into the eyes of alcoholism one night and say, "I need you." and that'd be the end of me.
I have a friend. A new friend, actually. She's a few years younger than my father, and she's from the same zip code as my grandfather. We may even share some parts of our gene code. Attala County is a pretty small place, but it's produced some remarkable people.
She started out at Millsaps, just like I did, then parlayed that start into a medical degree in New Orleans because you couldn't go to Medical School in Mississippi in those days. She became a pediatrician. My father-in-law, who I loved dearly, was also a pediatrician in her same class. When he had a patient who was really very, very sick, she was who he sent them to. That must have been hard for him. We shared a trait where it was very difficult to give up trying to take care of people, but there were cases where his skills weren't enough, and he required the help of my new friend, Dr. Amazing.
Her patients weren't just sniffles and bruises. Her patients were most likely going to die before they weren't children anymore. Instead of growing up, they would join the lost boys in Never Never Land and never grow up but lost to the world here that loved them. She celebrated the life of every child that did get better and keeps their file with her in the Skilled Nursing Facility where she now lives. She can't hear herself play the piano anymore, but she knows the name of every child that passed unto her care.
I wasn't there, but I've heard from several very reliable sources that she attended the funeral of every child who came under her care but didn't make it. Even writing that now makes me stop and seriously ponder--how could she do that. How could she possibly do that? Attending the funeral of children, I learned to love enough to try and treat them and made every effort to heal, only to fail and lose them would have broken me into a million jagged pieces, and she did it over and over as a part of her commitment as a healer. She's a tiny person. You could fit two of her on my shoulders, and yet she's infinitely stronger than I've ever been.
She saved the lives of thousands of innocent children and didn't burst into flames when she failed. I could never have done that. Sorry Daddy, but being a doctor was not for me. That's not to say I didn't have some fantastic failures of my own. There were several times when I spent years trying to heal someone or something, only to have it spiral out of control and crash into the sea. I act pretty strong in the face of it, but I'm not. I'm not at all. I don't need the bottle anymore, but there are times when I like knowing it's still there, just in case.
There's a book and a movie called "The Never Ending Story" about a boy fighting a growing nothing in his life. There are only three characters in the book, the boy, his father, and his mother, but they wear many different faces as the boy learns to save himself from The Nothing. My favorite character in the book is called Rockbiter. He's a giant, made of impervious stone, so strong that only rocks are tangible enough to use as food for him to survive. Made of stone, nothing at all can hurt him. He has two friends who he protects, a tiny man with a pet racing snail and an absent-minded bat.
The boy encounters the Rockbiter and his friends on his way to meet the Princess. They're happy and enjoying their life. As the nothing grows stronger, Atreyu encounters the Rockbiter again, only The Nothing has taken his two friends, and the Rockbiter sits alone.
"They look like big, good, strong hands, don't they? I always thought that's what they were. My little friends... the little man with his racing snail... even the stupid bat...I couldn't hold onto them... the Nothing pulled them right out of my hands. I failed. The Nothing will be here any minute. I will just sit here and let it take me away too. They look like good. Strong. Hands... don't they."
I'm glad I didn't become a doctor. The Nothing would have taken me away while I sat in a bar somewhere looking at my hands.
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