Where was it you fell?
Struggling for words, Frances appeared puzzled. Speaking to herself as much as to me, she whispered: “I just can’t remember where I fell.” Then turning her face to me and furrowing her brow, she demanded, “Dr. Whitlock, can you tell me where I fell?” She had not been out of the long-term care facility for at least a year. “You had to have fallen here, Ms. Frances,” I tried to console her. “If I only knew where I fell,” she said, still hoping, I suppose, that her pastor would somehow have the answer, because pastors should know those sorts of things, you know. It’s true that sometimes bad things happen to us because we are in the wrong. If I repeatedly run traffic lights, it is likely that the accident, and my possible injuries, would be my fault. Sometimes we are the ones to blame for our pain. At the same time, the people I crash into would be innocent. Something bad (the wreck) happened to them because of me. When we can trace our tragedy to some cause and effect, like that, we feel somewhat relieved, at least in relation to the why of the matter, though the pain and mystery can still weigh heavily there as well. “She was killed by a drunk driver,” for example, may answer the immediate question, “why?” A man was over the legal limit and drove irresponsibly. But that doesn’t address the deeper questions: “Why our daughter? Why then? Why, at all?” Then there are times when we can’t pinpoint who was to blame. It just happened. I wanted to know where my first wife had been “infected” with cancer. Was it something in the water in Oklahoma? Or was it the oil refineries in south Louisiana? Was she exposed to some chemical where she grew up in Mississippi? At last, the oncologist asked me, “If I could tell you, would it really make any difference, at this point?” (She had been diagnosed at stage four. “Stages? How many stages are there?” I had naively asked.) Knowing where she had “fallen,” greatly mattered to me, at least at the time. Beneath the question, “Where did I fall?” is the human desire to know why. This is the question that plaques us: “why?” Why do bad things happen to us? Job, a perfectly innocent man, wanted to know. His “friends” trotted out the standard answer: cause and effect. Bad stuff happens even to good people when good people do bad stuff. “So, Job, as good as you are, you surely did something wrong somewhere, confess it, and maybe good stuff will come your way.” …
Give One Up: Add One On
All the Youthfulness You Need
“Hume Cronyn,” she said, squinting her eyes in my direction. I was standing in the grocery store aisle. “Excuse me?” I responded, clueless about what she meant. “Hugh?” “Hume, Hume,” she emphasized, “Hume Cronyn, the actor. You look like him.” This was a bit unusual, at least for me. I not used to being stopped by a complete stranger in the grocery store and learning that I look like someone I’ve never heard of. On occasion, I have had people who read this column tell me they thought I looked taller in the newspaper’s photo than in real life. “But, it’s only a headshot,” I want to say. And, one lady told me my nose isn’t as big as it looks in the column’s picture. I walked away wondering if that was a compliment or a criticism. Then, a number of times, I’ve been told I look younger in the picture than when they met me. The being younger comment brings me back to Hume Cronyn. “Look him up,” the lady in the grocery store told me. “He was Jessica Tandy’s husband. You look just like him.” “Okay,” I mused, smiling at what I supposed was a compliment, “finally someone relates me with a movie star.” I was anxious to tell my wife. Jessica Tandy was a beautiful lady, wasn’t she?” I said to myself as I searched Aisle 12 for almond butter, which is high in Vitamin E and more likely to keep me healthy as I age. “So, this Hume fellow had to be a handsome dude,” I reasoned on the way to checking out. “Hume Cronyn, Hume Cronyn, Hume Cronyn,” I repeated to myself as I carried my groceries to the car, fearful that my memory, which doesn’t seem to me as sharp as it was years ago, might fail me. I googled his name, humming Buck Owens song, “They’re gonna put me in the movies,” as I searched. Much to my dismay, Hume looked, well, more seasoned than I had assumed. Not one to give up, I viewed pictures of him in his younger years, which were more flattering to him, and by association, to me as well. But the movies I remember him being in, once I recognized his character, pictured an actor beyond his prime. I scratched my head. “Did that lady think I looked like the young Cronyn, the old Cronyn, or the somewhere in–between Cronyn? Surely not the aging and shriveling Cronyn who starred in the movie, Cocoon.” …