“Wait,” Sara said. “You’re always visiting your grandfather in the nursing home.”
“And?” Julia asked.
“And my grandma is in the hospital, and they say she might not make it, and I don’t know what to do.”
“What happened?”
“She coughed up blood and drove herself to the doctor. The hospital called yesterday. I wanted to tell you then, but you were in your room. I wanted you to be there for me, but I couldn’t trouble you with my problems because I hadn’t been there when . . . I want you to come with me. That’s why I’m sorry. I wasn’t ever there for you, but I want you to come with me now.”
“Of course,” Julia said. “I can drive.”
When they got to the hospital Julia walked alongside Sara until they got to Sara’s grandmother’s room. Sara turned the knob and started to push the door open.
“You’re coming in with me?” Sara asked and looked up at Julia who was standing a few steps away. Julia hadn’t had the slightest intention of following Sara into the room.
“You really want me to go in with you? I’ve never met her,” she said in a hushed voice.
“I don’t know what to say to her. I didn’t know what to say yesterday either. Please come in with me.”
Julia consented and followed Sara into the room.
“Hi grandma,” Sara said as she took her place by the sick woman’s bed and folded her hands in front of her. Julia could see that her friend was shaking, and she pulled up one of the little chairs for Sara to sit down in. The sick woman lay motionless in her bed. Her hair was a mess, and her skin was so wrinkled that it seemed to be hanging from her bones. The stifling silence enhanced the sterile smell of the room. Sara sat down in the chair that Julia brought her, and the sick woman smiled a vibrant smile that looked completely out of place in that setting. Sara looked helplessly at Julia who broke the silence.
“I’m Julia,” she said, and then added, “I’m Sara’s friend.”
“Good to meet you,” the sick woman said. Another long silence ensued. Finally Sara spoke.
“Did the doctors give you good news?”
“In a manner of speaking,” said the woman.
“What did they say?” Sara said eagerly.
“The doctors say I probably won’t make it through the week. Don’t cry now.” Sara’s eyes had already begun to tear up. “We get to see it coming so there’s plenty of time to say goodbye. A lot of people don’t get that.”
Julia felt out of place in the room and tried to make herself as small as possible as she sat in the corner.
“I’m going to miss you though,” Sara objected. “I hate being in here now and seeing you like this, knowing you’re dying.”
“Whose dying?” the old woman said. “I’m just going home. I’ll be glad when I finally get there. I’ve spent too many years in this sad place already. We’ve all got to go home at some point. For dust though art, and unto dust shalt thou return. It’s all part of our curse for sinning in the garden, for the way all humanity is always disobeying God and being ugly to one another. But now that I’ve lived all these years in this sad place, I don’t know if I should think of going back to dust as a curse anymore. It’s more of a blessing. The curse is all the years we’ve got to tarry in this place, this vale of shadows, with all the hurts and all the tears we have to go through during these tired years. I’m tired you know.”
“I know,” Sara said softly.
“I’ve got to go home when I hear him calling me you know. You couldn’t convince me to stay here for all the world.”
“I know grandma,” Sara said again.
“I know you do, but you do me this favor,” she said. Then the old woman looked over at Julia for the first time. “You girls be good to each other. Everyone’s always being ugly to everyone else, but you girls be good to each other. This world’s a sad place; I can’t deny it, but if two friends love each other then it can be bearable. That’s what your grandfather and I had. Look out for each other and forgive each other when you’re ugly to one another, because everybody’s ugly sometimes. Forgive each other, because when people are being ugly to other people it’s usually the times when they really need for other people to forgive them and love them. But these days nobody wants to love someone who’s treating them ugly, and so they’re ugly back, and that’s why this world’s such a sad place to have to tarry in.”
“I understand,” Sara said and then added, “But maybe the doctors are wrong.” Her tone was a hopeless one. “They were wrong with Julia’s grandfather. You might have another year or two or three left.”
“Do me a favor darling. Don’t go trying to prolong my life any longer than it ought to be. I know that a lot of people are running around out there trying to live forever, or at least for as long as they can, but these bodies weren’t made to last more than a few short years, and that’s a blessing. They get old and start falling apart, and finally they just stop working altogether. I can’t say that I’m sad to see it finally happening to this one of mine.”
Julia emerged from her corner and went to the bedside. She leaned in close to the old woman and whispered in her ear. The old women smiled as if she understood everything perfectly and said, “You’re welcome.”
Julia stepped back, looked at Sara, and then said that she would leave the two to have some time alone before stepping into the hallway. She waited patiently for another twenty minutes.
“When you left, what did you say?” Sara asked when she finally came out into the hallway.
Julia studied her puffy red cheeks and her tear stained eyes that waited on an answer.
“Thank you.”
“What?” Sara asked.
“I told her thank you.”
Chapter 8
Cathedrals
I’ve seen a room filled with a dim light,
tainted by the stains on the windows,
stains that make them beautiful with shades of reds and greens,
stains that permit only those beams of light deemed aesthetic.
In this dim room, brilliant light comes through
in snippets, most of it absorbed by the stains on the windows;
fractions of splendor pierce the tainted glass
to illuminate the room, still dark, though lined with windows.
One who sees the stains for what they are might fight the urge
to throw a stone at the glass, to shatter the stains
and let all the shades and all the brilliance shine through the hole;
then, eyes, remembering the richness of full light, would see clearly.
But the hands that formed the glass meant well,
and as the sun hangs at just the right angle
it sparkles through, and one can’t help but wonder
if its light wasn’t always meant to be seen like this.
The room is so agreeable in its tainted form;
it does not hurt one’s eyes to look at it, and,
after just a short time, one’s eyes adjust to the dim light
that fails to illuminate the shadowy nooks and corners.
But as the sun descends, even those rays of light
that had managed to shine through the stains fade from view,
leaving only darkness, as the world revolves, and the sun
illuminates new regions, regions without stained windows.
“So you’d say my chances are better?” Hannah asked. She sat on the white paper spread out over the beige chair surrounded by the white walls. The only decorations were a few diagrams that hung from those walls and a human skeleton in the far corner.
“Much better,” the doctor said without looking up from his clipboard on which he was scribbling something.
“How much is ‘much better’?” Hannah asked.
“I’d say 97%.” The doctor looked up from his clipboard and adjusted his glasses. He looked so young.
“He can’t be more than four or five years older than David,
” Hannah thought. She fidgeted a little, and the white paper made an awful crinkling sound.
“That’s only 3% the other way,” she said sheepishly.
“Don’t even think about that,” the doctor suggested. “It might even be less. You just need to keep coming in so we can make sure that it stays in remission. We’re lucky to have found this as early as we did. That’s why your chances are so good.”
Hannah thanked the doctor and stood up to leave. The paper crinkled.
“Like I said,” the doctor added, “don’t think about that 3%. Our staff here is one of the best. You can trust that we’ll be doing everything we can for you.”
Hannah thanked the doctor again, and glanced one last time at the human skeleton in the corner of the office before stepping through the door that the doctor had opened for her.
“You can pay at the front desk,” he reminded her as she stepped into the hallway.
“Of course,” Hannah said without turning around. She thought about the 3% as she walked down the long white hallway that led to the reception room. Who could keep from thinking about that 3%? Hannah’s thoughts wandered from the decimal to the skeleton and then to the friendly voice behind the counter reminding her to whom she should make out the check.
* * *
Peter woke up from his afternoon nap in time to meet Stanly for a drink. Stanly was still dressed from his day at the office. Peter wore tattered blue jeans and an old t-shirt.
“What are you going to do now, look for a new job in telecommunications or are you ready for something different?” Stanly asked
“I’m going to go and pursue my dream of being a clown,” Peter answered.
“But you’re not funny.”
“Then I’ll go and be a pirate.”
“Remember, limited life expectancy as a pirate,” Stanly still had some levity in his voice but not much.
“What do I care about life expectancy? What am I living for? You still want to be my first mate?”
“You’ve got to pull yourself together.”
Peter fidgeted in his chair. “Does that mean you’re not going to be my first mate? You should leave your wife before she leaves you and come with me to sail the seven seas.”
“You’re not even drunk yet,” Stanly noted. “At least wait until you’ve had a few beers before you say something like that. Maybe my marriage isn’t the greatest, but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to end up like you.”
“Maybe you won’t, but I hope for your sake that you do.”
Stanly was obviously offended.
“I didn’t mean anything by it,” Peter added quickly. “But I’ve had a little time to think, during commercials mostly, but that’s been enough time to realize how pointless everything is. I woke up every morning so I could go to work and spend all day sitting in an office building doing something that bored me to death, all so I could walk out at the end of the month with a big fat pay check that was enough to cover the house payment, the car payments, and anything else that I could possibly need or want. But now that I’ve traded the big house in the suburbs for a run-down apartment I’m starting to realize that it’s all the same; it’s all pointless. When you watch everything you’ve worked for your whole life going up in flames, it makes a man wonder why he’d worked so hard in the first place.
“I’ve been wondering a lot about what the purpose of it all is, and I’ll tell you that there wasn’t ever any purpose; it was all completely meaningless. So I’m telling you now that if you don’t like your job—and I know you don’t—and if you don’t like going home to your wife because she nags you, then you just need to leave it all behind. Come with me, and we’ll be pirates together.
“Don’t look at me like I’m crazy. I’m saying all of this while I’m sober so you won’t write me off as a rambling drunk. It might be the only sober thing I say all day, so don’t think I’m rambling. You’re the one who’s out of your mind. Think about what you’re working for. What do you want? We’re all here for a few years and then we’re gone. It can happen in an instant, or we might drag it out for as long as we can, but in the end everything we work for doesn’t amount to anything; it’s all pointless. But you can’t understand. If you slept in tomorrow and didn’t go to work because you just didn’t feel like going then you might be able to understand.”
Stanly interrupted his friend. “I brought you something.” He pulled out a folded sheet of paper and handed it to Peter. “I got you an interview; it’s tomorrow, which I know is short notice, but if you want to get the job you’ll need to put on something a little more formal than blue jeans.”
“Didn’t you hear anything I said? I don’t want another pointless job to look forward to every pointless day of my life.” Peter crumpled up the paper and dropped it on the table between them.
“Just think about it,” Stanly said and pushed the paper back toward Peter.
* * *
On the way back from the doctor’s office Hannah stopped at the bookstore. She felt fed up with literature and wanted to buy something that could help her cope. Maybe the classics that she’d been struggling through could offer that, but if they could, all their advice would surely be hidden under the surface. She needed something direct, something modern, something that could speak to her exactly where she was. She needed the words of an intimate acquaintance, of a friend.
As she surveyed the titles that sectioned off the bookstore: mystery, biography, horror, children’s. She went to the one labeled: “Self Help” and pored over titles. She didn’t know exactly what she hoped to find help with. Maybe Coping with Death for Dummies or So You’re Past Your Prime and All Alone. She didn’t find either of those titles, so she pulled the next best thing off the shelf and opened the cover. She looked at the picture of the author. She was a woman in her late forties. Like Hannah, she wasn’t unattractive. She wore a suit similar to what Hannah had on. The only difference that Hannah could find lay in her confident smile that seemed to say: Trust me; I’ve got it all together.
“It’s all marketing,” Hannah thought. “This woman’s life could be just as much of a wreck as my own. Or maybe she’s still living in the ignorant denial that I lived in a year ago. Maybe I should be writing a book full of advice for everyone else who thinks that their life will turn out perfectly. Someone should warn them.”
Hannah wracked her brain for a title for the book she would write while she waited in line to buy the advice of a woman who could at least look like she had everything figured out.
* * *
When Wednesday morning came around Thomas sprang from his bed with the same vigor that he’d had on Monday, a stark contrast with Tuesday’s lethargic struggle to find motivation. He went through his morning routine and gathered everything he would need for the day, double-checking to make sure that he’d put his paper on Nietzsche in his backpack. He still had half an hour before he needed to leave for class, so he pulled out the paper to look over it again, not with the intention of making any last minute revisions—he’d spent all day yesterday doing that—but to admire his work one last time. He skipped to his favorite section, the one that he’d spent hours going over Tuesday afternoon, and read with glee.
The Myth of Religion:
All religions attempt to create guilt as a way of making themselves indispensable. Christianity especially tries to convince men that it is a necessary factor in alleviating their guilt, that they are too weak to do it on their own. What men needs isn’t the Bible but something that teaches them how to abolish their guilt. According to Nietzsche, “One would have to be a theologian to believe in a power that annuls guilt: we immoralists prefer not to believe in ‘guilt.’” The church as an institute has spent centuries trying to project this guilt. In fact all of “Christianity is no more than ‘the torturing and vivisection of the conscience.’ ” Nietzsche saw in the 19th century what modern man has yet to accept. Throngs of people continue to fill church buildings every Sunday morning out of the guilt based eco
nomy of the church. They feel that they must go or they will be even guiltier, and thus the church has created a perpetual cycle of imposing its ideas about guilt on the common man. Their primary weapon is the fear of death. Nietzsche notes that the “fear of death, for example, is systematically confused with fear of the ‘after death.’” This fear of the after death is directly related to centuries of images of hell and torture perpetuated by the church.
Nietzsche understands that society makes “a thing painful by investing it with an evaluation.” The church causes more pain than it will ever heal because it creates the evaluations of sinfulness and wrong that have permeated society and have mired down countless brilliant minds in trivial pursuits such as the redemption of the soul—something that no intelligent person could believe in as it, “arose from unscientific reflection on the [agonies of] the body.” Christianity has discovered that “fundamentally it is only the fear of punishment that keeps men within bounds and leaves everyone in peaceful possession of his own.” But what society is not willing to admit is that “punishment does not purify, for crime does not sully.” The church does not dare tell society this because when the masses wake up to this truth it’s primary weapon will be rendered useless.
Christianity pretends to have the market cornered when it comes to truth while Nietzsche affirms that “there are many kinds of truth and consequently there is no truth.” But even if there were one truth it would be to follow one’s instincts. When there is a multiplicity of truth there is no truth. Nietzsche understood this, and he affirms that “there is no meaning in anything.” When this truth gets out, society will be plunged into chaos because every thinking person will realize the truth in Nietzsche’s exclamation: “Everything is false! Everything is permitted!”
Thomas placed the paper carefully in his notebook, which he in turn placed in his backpack and hurried to class, forgetting to eat breakfast.
* * *
Peter looked at the suit and tie. The thought of putting them on and going to the interview to grovel for a job repulsed him. He was still free. He couldn’t go back to that old life. He was free, and all he wanted was to keep that freedom. He went ahead and got dressed. The dress shirt was too tight and choked him a little. He unbuttoned the top button and tightened his tie. When he looked at himself in the mirror he saw the opportunity to have his old life back; he hated what he saw. He looked down at his watch. It was time to go. He looked back at the mirror and studied his reflection. He loosened the striped red tie and flopped down on the couch. Part of Him wanted to get up and go to the interview, but getting up from the couch was so difficult. The alarm that he’d set to remind him to leave went off. Peter glanced at his watch, which confirmed that it was indeed time to leave, and a part of him still struggled to get up from the couch that had swallowed him.