Some Thoughts on Niagara Falls

Over the past two weeks I’ve started on several posts for this blog but didn’t finish any of them, not quite satisfied with the subject or how the words came out. Then this afternoon I caught part of a History Channel program about people associated with Niagara Falls. Among the barrel riders and rescuers, one story stood out – in 1960 siblings Deanne and Roger Woodward were on an outing for Deanne’s birthday when their small fishing boat was swamped on the Niagara River and overturned in the rapids. They were rapidly swept towards the edge; the man whose boat they were on disappeared and was later found dead.

Seven-year-old Roger went over the Horseshoe Falls and is the only person known to have survived that ride without any protection (he had on a swimsuit and a life jacket). He was pulled out of the water by crew members on the Maid of the Mist. Deanne, 17, was saved 20 feet from the brink by John R. Hayes, a truck driver and auxiliary police officer from New Jersey who happened to visit the park that day. Although many other tourists were watching the drama unfold, only he had the courage to rush to the water’s edge and urge Deanne to swim to him, and then caught her by the hand with another man holding his legs to keep him from going in.

The two siblings were taken to the hospital; both were in amazingly good condition considering their ordeal (Roger had a minor concussion); both were featured prominently in the news… but when Deanne asked to see Mr. Hayes to thank him, she was apparently told that as a black man he was not welcome at the hospital. The History Channel program showed them meeting for the first time since that eventful day, where she finally got to thank him in person for saving her life some fifty years earlier.

Her gratitude was exceeded only by his dignity.

Frank and I lived for five years in Buffalo NY, just down the road from Niagara Falls. But somehow we never went there until the day he was discharged from the hospital in 2009, a week after the cancer diagnosis. On the way home I didn’t get off at our exit – instead I drove the 21 miles north to the State Park. Once there, we had to ask ourselves why we had waited so long to discover for ourselves what a beautiful place it is – yes, we were busy people, but it shouldn’t take a personal disaster to make creating happy time together more of a priority.

We went to the park as often as possible through those next four months. Sometimes Frank was too sick to walk far so we’d just drive slowly through the park or sit on a bench. Other days we spent several hours exploring or just standing over the water, enthralled by its tumult and power. Our favorite spot was Three Sisters Island, where the picture below was taken on our last trip there. 

It was an immensely restorative place for us and we always left feeling renewed. Even though the park is for everyone, we felt it was our space.

I still have conflicted feelings about Buffalo and although I have friends there, it’s taken me until now to be emotionally ready to go back. My dear friends Serge and Christine are getting married later this summer and I want to be there to celebrate their happiness. And perhaps I’ll make a drive up the road to visit those old familiar places again.

Postscript: Mr. Hayes still lives in New Jersey and recently celebrated his 100^th birthday. I hope it was immensely happy and filled with blessings – his hometown of Vauxhall named him their Hero of the Century.

"So Much Unfairness of Things"

In considering Frank’s battle with cancer and losing him far too soon, I’ve thought often about the classic short story So Much Unfairness of Things, in which a young man is expelled from private boarding school for cheating on a Latin test to avoid his father’s disapproval.

The title just stuck in my mind I guess – I’d read it in Mr. Teale’s 7^th grade English class. At that time love was an impractical mystery, boys were incomprehensible bundles of noise, and I was an awkward nervous girl whose bookish shyness could be mistaken for being stuck-up or so I was told. Plus I couldn’t play softball to save my life, which was the social test of acceptability in the rural town where I’d been abruptly transplanted.

Around the same age, Frank had gone through his own awkward phase. After one too many run-ins with bullies, among them a neighborhood punk and a Nazi phys. ed. teacher, one summer he built his own Nautilus-style gym equipment and put it to good use. Come September he established his primacy by climbing the school rope hands-only to the ceiling, then settled the score with the punk. How he relished repeating that bit of triumph and self-mastery!

By the time we met, we were grown-up people with our own lives, careers and interests. He was 30 and single, I was 38 and divorced. I vividly remember the first time we met – it might sound corny but there was this little bell going ding-ding-ding somewhere in my head and heart saying “This guy! This one! That’s what you were looking for!” (What he remembered about that meeting is that I was wearing a short black dress with red tights and black boots – thank you, Donna Karan!) It didn’t take us long to figure out that the feelings were very mutual, and for 15 years we never parted without a kiss and a “Love you – see you later.” 

I don’t know if he ever read So Much Unfairness of Things; Frank’s tastes ran more to engineering, physics, and experimental science. But he had a sharp sense of justice and personal responsibility. Would he have felt sympathy for P.S. Wilkinson, who sought to escape judgment through a dishonorable act and ended up with a life sentence of shame?  Not sympathy perhaps, but he would have understood.

Life is inherently unfair at least from the short view, or we’d all be tall blond rich astrophysicist organic gardeners with Ferraris or something like that. It happens that good people die young, even very young, or are broke, or ignored; bad people live to healthy old age, or are misleadingly attractive, or win the Lotto. Thankfully the reverse is also true, there’s just no such thing as a level playing field and there’d be no game if all the players were exactly the same size with the same attributes and outcomes. Plus very boring.

But the trick seems to be finding ways to make life good anyway, as much as that brings up images of inspirational platitudes with no more depth than a $2 greeting card. Frank and I spent a lot of time discovering ways that worked for him and for us; sometimes fumblingly, sometimes in a stroke of intuition, sometimes from sheer perfect serendipity. 

And the only advice I could give to someone else living in the face of loss is to be willing to fumble, follow your intuition, and enjoy the gifts of serendipity that will come, because life is good after all.

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Postscript: In writing this, I had to look up C.D.B. Bryan, who wrote the short story I mentioned above. His son has a wonderful website at http://saintbryantv.blogspot.com/ with many photos, reviews and articles from the 67 boxes found in his father’s attic, including a fantastic piece about Kurt Vonnegut.

On it I found this quotation from the author:

“My praise for cancer lies in the gift it gave me: the gift of knowing I was loved.”

I find this both moving and very sad. Talk about unfair. 

The Day that Everything Changed

Four years ago today my life changed radically beyond anything I could have imagined. I’ve tried to write about the experience before now, but have managed only bits and scraps on the backs of envelopes, a never-shared blog with just one post, and an online journal that was supposed to send me email reminders to post in it but never did so neither did I. Technology failed me there, as did my own initiative.

Time passed, various adventures intervened and so here I am now, giving it another go. What happened? Why talk about it? What difference did it make? What difference can I make as a result?

I can’t answer everything at once, or perhaps even at all, but I’ll regret it if I never try. And one of the big lessons of this experience was the very real necessity to get up and do the things you’ve only thought about. Or in this case, lounge on the bed with a laptop and a glass of iced tea, hoping the cats will leave me alone long enough to put some sense into this.

Four years ago I lived in Buffalo NY with my husband Frank. He’d recently lost some weight and had a bad bellyache that wouldn’t go away, so was finally arm-twisted into going to the ER at ECMC (Erie County Medical Center). He hadn’t seen a doctor in 20+ years and was proud of how strong and healthy he was. Plus his mom had gone into the hospital with a minor infection when Frank was 13 and she died 4 days later, and I think he had retained a certain suspicion of the medical profession ever since.

Frank left by himself in the morning and was gone all day; he had brushed off the idea of my going too. By 5pm he still had no answers and I was very antsy, so got a ride out there and we sat in a little exam room off the ER for several more hours. He was grouchy and hungry, hadn’t eaten all day; they’d done blood tests, X-rays and a CT scan, but had given him no results or explanations. Finally around 10pm a doctor came in … I think his name was Dr. Cloud, I remember he looked like someone who went on skiing vacations, fit and tan and young, with blue eyes that matched his scrubs.

He said, “There’s something on the scan of your liver that looks suspicious; it could be an infection but you have no fever, or it could be hepatitis but you have no risk factors for that, or it could be cancer.”

The word hung in the air between us. I froze and just looked at him, my heart pounding, because I understood that this was their answer and he was breaking it gently. “We’re going to admit you and do some more tests and get you some treatment, and we’re really, really happy that you came in when you did.” He left. I looked at Frank. All he said was, “Well that sucks.”

What followed was a blur. We were both in shock. It was like stepping off a curb on a street you know well and falling 15 feet into an invisible black hole that closes over your head. I tried to hold off the dark for both of us, did the paperwork, met the nurses, got him settled, hugged and kissed him and promised I’d be back first thing in the morning, then left wishing I could climb into that bed and stay.

As I was finally leaving some time after midnight, two young people – a tall slender girl, very pregnant, and a solidly built fellow in a football jersey – were about 10 feet ahead of me walking down the corridor towards the exit.  Now, they didn’t know I was there, it was quite late, the hallway was otherwise deserted, and he could be forgiven for thinking he could get away with releasing a truly impressive fart without notice.

I couldn’t help it – I laughed out loud.

They turned around, mortified at the sight of a frazzled and entirely unexpected white woman probably the age of their mothers. The girl began to apologize, scolding him for being rude, and he looked anywhere but at me. I approached saying, “No, no, don’t apologize, it was funny - thank you for making me laugh on the worst day of my life. My husband is upstairs and we were just told he has cancer and I don’t know what’s going to happen and I am scared to death.”

She put her arms around me and prayed out loud, the first of many good-hearted angels we met on this suddenly alien landscape.

Went home, sent a bleak email to my sister asking her to call me first thing in the morning, and went to sleep wrapped up in Frank’s sheets, his pillow wet with my tears at the end of the long day where everything changed.

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Of course this was only the start of a story that was by turns terrifying, happy, exhilarating, heart-breaking and beautiful. Such is life. Such are days, since every day is an anniversary of something remembered or not. What will you remember about today?

6 June 2013