Wishing On a New Moon Over Tucson

As a longtime journalist, I know the best stories and the smallest are sometimes never told, but many originate or are linked with the sprawling Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center, Long Beach.

My bitterest issue in years as a patient was the relentless disease of alcoholism complicated by clinical depression, both finally overcome. The VA facilities are a godsend, this one alone serving 45,000 regional patients.

I'm sober 21 years now. My most grateful memories are of VA staff and volunteers who do jobs that aren't glamorous,  duties they sign on for, the same as military men and women.

I hobbled with a cane in 2009, not from Vietcong mortar shrapnel, though my Army time fell into that era, but severe osteoarthitis, my own body sabotaging me, approaching my 70th year.  I was facing surgery again for a second hip replacement. The left hip socket cartilage was ground down to bare bone; that leg shorter than the other, scraping, popping and cracking as I moved. Often, it felt like broken glass, or a phantom bayonet thrust ripping from waist to knee.

My heart was broken too, though I'm on my own with that.

My fiancee died Sept. 1, 2009, but that's just life. I took her to our 1959 senior prom--our only date--then lost touch for 46 years before reconnecting through the Classmates website. We had, it would develop, thought of one another often, curious if the years had been kind, or otherwise.

We e-mailed daily for a week, then I called her in Tucson, where she lived with a disabling respiratory ailment and congenital heart condition. I was nervous dialing, like it was 1959; deja vu all over again.

"Verna?," I asked, when she picked up.
"Who is this?," she demanded, with a bit more pepper in her voice than at  15, a gifted alto soprano who sang in a respected Central Coast chorale.
"This is Art...,"I stammered.
"My Art...?" she gasped.

Her second question was: Why didn't you call me again after the prom?.

Then the story unfolded, and a misunderstanding that spanned two lifetimes became clear.

Verna came from a strange, troubled, violent family background--things undiscussed in the 1950s--which caused her periods of silent withdrawal  into a private  place. And when she was so oddly mute and adrift on our prom night,, I assumed I had done or said something wrong. I was 17 and my low self-esteem, depression and budding alcoholic's mindset--which I hid carefully--would never let me ask if something was wrong. She might tell me. And it would surely be my shortcomings and inadequacy, a perception  I had Iong felt.

We were two wounded children, me in my rented white dinner jacket and Verna in a lovely, honeydew melon green gown of tulle that her mother sewed. And when I reminded her 46 years later how beautiful she had been that night, she burst into tears,

"I can't even remember what I wore, " she wept. "I can't remember Christmases, or birthdays or even how my room was decorated.

"There was always always a big fight of some kind. I don't remember what they were even about, but I learned to just 'go away' somewhere and block everything out. And then, at the prom, I was excited and happy. You were so handsome and so mature and in-charge.But it seemed to have the same effect, I could feel myself, going away to that place again. I'm so sorry..."

Her parents didn't even drink, but her father was a railroad locomotive engineer given to explosive rages for no reason, beating her brothers bloody until they were old enough to threaten him. Her mother was subject to melancholy, alternately cheerful or sarcastic and cold, uncomfortable at showing affection.

I remembered the other day, noticing the faint southerly slant of the sun toward fall, a month after the summer solstice and a month shy of her passing two years ago. We did have nearly three years, albeit long-distance. We talked of a mountain cabin, at low altitude to ease her lungs' crying need for more oxygen.

We'd have a West Highland White Terrier, named Emily, buying her Scottish tartan  ribbons, bows and scarves. We didn't expect prosperity, but hoped for contentedness, near to nature.

We baked in Tucson's dry air. We tried a month here on the coast, but the sea air's humidity was too great for her illness and all the while, Verna's blood oxygen level steadily diminished. Her weight slowly dropped, despire my love of creative cooking. 

The COPD-ravaged lungs achingly expand, ever seeking more air, and eventually press down on the patient's diaphragm and stomach. so even a few bites of a meal cause a sensation of fullness. They just cannot eat enough.

Some live long with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) but no one gets well. No one ever even gets better. Verna insisted she was. Her caregivers denied it, a cruel truth they could have spared her. 

One of my last weeks in Tucson, we sat quietly holding hands in the back yard, watching a luminous sliver of new moon rise among a sparkly smorgasbord of early stars, silently wondering how many more we might see together.

A week after her death, returned from Tucson, I'd had three VA appointments, hip X-rays for the surgery I'd put off, orthopedic consultation and grief therapy with my favorite counselor. I hadn't slept for two nights. I was just given notice at my last regular part-time job, a victim of our American economy and Austrian-born governor.

My leg ached badly.  I missed Verna, remembering waking up early on Sept. 1 to find my Dolly Girl had taken her last breath. She liked her nickname. She called me Artie. I'd slept on the stained carpet by her hospice bed.

Why couldn't I have been wakeful that night, of all nights?

"No, there was nothing you could have done," the head nurse assured, patting my shoulder. Verna's vital signs had flat-lined, bringing the duty staff running. Their vibrating footfalls, felt in the floor where  I lay woke me.

"It was just her time. We'll give you awhile alone together."

Verna had evidently sat up in bed, as though surprised from sleep by mortality's silent arrival, her eyes now peacefully closed. I reverently moved to sit beside her. I was surprised, yet not.

"Hi Baby," I whispered. What a dumb damn thing to say, I thought fleetingly.

Her hand was still warm. Her mouth hung slightly open to the left, but I couldn't smooth it into a composed position, no matter how I tried. Her departure had been swift and silent, probably her congenital heart malfunction taking her at the last.

Only two hours after we had giddily agreed at last to marry,  in a phone call the night of Aug, 26, her son Greg called me back. He'd found her collapsed, comatose, on the floor of their mobile home.

"You'd better come," he said resignedly.
She hung on three more days, sometimes awake, but oddly cheerful.

                        *    *    *

"Do you think about her often?", my VA therapist asked softly, as I carefully talked of other things: the abrupt job loss, near-poverty, nagging pain and being 68 now. I bit my lip hard, clenched my teeth and turned my head away, jaw trembling. I did't reply, clinging to male dignity.

Yes. I think about my Dolly Girl daily, but a man should suck it up and accept what we knew was inevitable. She'd been sick a long time. Yeah, I cried a little, but I kept my head turned from my therapist. Long years single and unattached through them all, I'd never thought to love a girl again. Old guys seek immunity from courting heartbreak.

Looking back though, I feel a wince of sadness, but not sorrow, for we were right to have joined hands, taken chances and made plans, as though tomorrow is a guarantee and not a gamble.

                                  --30--