Maybe Next Time, Brother (Vaguely Worried)

Maybe Next Time, Brother

The new-and-improved Me imagines an evolved spiritual self whose shortcomings have been identified, confronted and subjugated. So, you will appreciate that what I am going to share is profoundly uncomfortable. Taking personal inventory always is. But I am savvy enough to know discomfort is a clear sign that what’s on my mind must be aired out. Mold cannot grow in the sunlight. I will try to make this long story short...

I received a phone call late one Saturday night from a casual friend, Walter, a single 60-something I met a few years ago. Walter and I have little in common and no history, but he is good company and a roving fixture in most of the local coffee shops, migrating over the course of a day from one to the other, following some internal social compass. This is how we met – over conversation and coffee with mutual friends. It is my impression that Walter is tangentially acquainted with everyone in town by a degree or two of separation -- if you do not know him personally, certainly someone you know knows him.

Last year Walter was ill and spent almost nine months at the VA Hospital in Westwood. I was among many who visited with him – weekly, in my case, and by default. Somehow I ended up with his key ring, so it was left to me to bring him his mail and start his car periodically. For the most part, I embraced these simple acts as opportunities to be of service. At times, I regarded them as chores.

Walter’s call that Saturday night started out very how’re-you-doing casual but quickly became bizarre. In a calm voice, he explained that he had maybe done something stupid. His sister was coming to visit, and his small house was infested by earwigs. He had spent the afternoon sweeping them up. When he had collected a pile, he sprayed them with Raid, and they had emitted small clouds of white powder. Furthermore, armies of little earwigs – the offspring -- had crawled out and taken over the house. Thousands of them. Some crawled up his legs and were now lost in his body hair. Several had found a cut on his forearm and actually entered his body.

Now, admittedly, I am often slow on the uptake, so I accepted most of Walter’s story under the heading of Realm of Possibility. I have never sprayed an earwig with anything, so who knows? Maybe it’s earwig-breeding season, and the shock of the poison convulsed the mommies, and the little buggers were released in a cloud of white dust? It could happen.

But there was more. Walter had gone to the VA Hospital for treatment. He said they had kept him waiting for hours, that the waiting area was crowded with ‘McCains’ (recognizable by a particular t-shirt they all wore), and the hospital staff was seeing them before Walter, even though he had been waiting longer.

As I said, I am slow, but I am not a complete numbskull. Eventually, it registered that Walter was likely experiencing a psychotic episode, complete with hallucinations and paranoid delusions.

And so the dilemma presented itself: was I prepared to play hero at that moment, to chuck all other considerations and take charge of Walter’s psychotic episode? The last time I stepped up to help this man I unwittingly bought a six-month commitment.

So, I considered the situation practically. He wasn’t sounding particularly distressed. I knew he had scores of other local people he could call. Perhaps he already had. And he told me his sister had phoned from Topanga and was 20-minutes away. Twice. I desperately wanted to believe this last bit of information. On the other hand, now that I had made my amateur diagnosis, could I trust anything Walter told me? Wouldn’t the right thing be to grab a sleeping bag and baby sit Walter and the earwigs for the night?

Of course. But that is not what I did. I told Walter to call me back if his sister didn’t show, and that’s how I left it with him. And then I was left with myself. He did not call back, which was relief and torment in the same package. I spent the night thrashing myself over my failure to take the most obvious and basic Christian action.

Happily, I learned the next day that Walter’s sister did arrive that night. She brought him to a neurologist and a shrink. He was prescribed reserpine (an anti-psychotic), and he quickly recovered his faculties. So, mercifully, my conscience was spared any further baggage. No harm, no foul, right?

I wish it were that simple. I remain disturbed by my lack of action and by what it betrays about me. While I like to think that I am a reliable, charitable and fundamentally good person, apparently this is a delusion. This is a blow, not simply to my manufactured self-image, but to something very deep somewhere dangerously close to my soul.

Surely, this was one of those crossroad moments for which we gird ourselves with church services and personal prayers? Spiritual preparation for that moment we are called to act. Well, apparently you have to catch me in the right mood, and only when it’s convenient.

I do not have to whip out the Book to know this is basic human failure. The knowledge that I am imperfect and ‘only human’ is not a news flash. But nor is it solace. I accept it, of course, but applying it as a catchall, especially in this case, feels like a cop out. It is self-serving and shamefully lame.

So, that’s what I’m wrestling with lately, and I don’t expect closure any time soon. Perhaps never. There is a spiritual ideal I recognize intellectually where goodness is instinctual, and where right actions are not trumped by practical considerations and rationalization. You don’t think -- you act. Right actions become habits. Habits become character. And character, ultimately, becomes your legacy.

I am left worrying about mine.