Musings of an Aging Nobody

Would You Like A Lime With That Week Ten

Ecclesiastes 7

A good name is better than fine perfume,
and the day of death better than the day of birth.
² It is better to go to a house of mourning
than to go to a house of feasting,
for death is the destiny of everyone;
the living should take this to heart.
³ Frustration is better than laughter,
because a sad face is good for the heart.
⁴ The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning,
but the heart of fools is in the house of pleasure.

On Monday about an hour before my weekly zoom staff meeting, I received a call from the daughter of a friend of mine telling me that my friend had passed away.

My friend was a victim of the virus.

We always have a devotional at the beginning of our meetings. For this meeting one of my co-workers chose a reading from Ecclesiastes 7.  It seemed to fit with my morning phone call I thought as she was reading.

As this new normal continues we are getting more used to forgoing our traditional rituals or at least creatively modifying them.  For Mother’s Day the kids set up a table in the driveway and surprised Kim with a “to go” lunch from a local restaurant.  We social distanced. It was the first time we had seen the kids in about eight weeks. Cameron even put on a tie.  Of course we had to settle for the live feed over the cell phone for the Florida kids.  But in the end, Kim said it was one of her best Mother’s Days.

Sadly however, forgoing our rituals applies to celebrating life in death as well.

My friend was older than me, really just four years younger than my father.

He also shared something else in common with my dad and that was that he too had Parkinson’s Disease.

I always thought it a bit ironic that my friend who I very much thought of in a paternal way, would also have Parkinson’s.  I used to think, what a coincidence, both my “dads” have Parkinson’s.  And the same patience I learned to exercise with my father became more important as my friend’s disease progressed.

I first met Frank while I was a student at Northern Virginia Community College’s Respiratory Therapy program.  I believe he was the medical director of the program at the time, but he also was one of the two pulmonary physicians who taught our disease case study class.  I remember hearing before the first class, all the rumors, and the warnings, and advice from those who had previously taken this class was that you definitely didn’t want to get Dr. Fusco as your case study instructor.  He would tear you up.  But then meeting him for the first time in class and sizing up his personality I realized he was just another Italian guy from North Jersey.  What is wrong with that?  Having recently relocated from New Jersey, it made me feel at home.

After graduating, the next time I saw Frank, I was as his patient.

An enlarged lymph node was found on a routine chest x-ray in my mediastinum.  The unilateral enlarged node presented itself more like a cancer finding and less like something benign.  After a CT scan was ordered I was referred to a chest surgeon for the biopsy. On the day before I was to be admitted to Fairfax Hospital for the procedure, I was sitting in Frank’s waiting room when he came out from the back and sat down beside me, put his arm around me and he said,

“Let’s just hope it’s benign.”

Up to that time he hadn’t given me any real reason to be worried, but once he came out to the waiting room and did the whole arm around me “let’s hope it’s benign” thing I proceeded to panic.

The biopsy confirmed it was benign.  It turned out to be histoplasmosis, a fungal infection you get from bird poop.

But I would always remember that moment of compassion and concern for my health.  And it greatly impacted our friendship.

Time went on and I went to work in the ICU at Fairfax Hospital (now Inova Fairfax).  Frank was one of the more senior pulmonary physicians practicing at Fairfax and he was also the medical director of the Respiratory Therapy Department.

When I left the hospital to work in respiratory homecare and the company I worked for needed a medical director, I asked Frank.   Once again we were working together.

I remember a time waiting in line in a hotel lobby in New Orleans where we were both attending the National Association of Respiratory Care’s annual meeting when I said something to him that he thought was too much in his personal business.  Once we were both checked in he took me aside and set me straight on just how far I was crossing the line.  It was awesome.  Just like getting yelled at by my dad.

Having been in the Air Force, Frank loved to fly and in fact owned his own plane with another physician.  One evening we sponsored a company function at the Barns of Wolf Trap for our referral sources and he was telling me about the vintage Navy trainer he was going to rent the next morning from the airfield at Quantico and he invited me to fly with him. I think he was a member of the Civil Air Patrol at that airfield.

“Hell no,” I said continuing with something like, “you are not going to get me up in one of those little planes, let alone an old, little plane.”

But by the end of the evening and after a couple beers I had signed on as co-pilot.  The drive from my home in Reston to Quantico that next morning was one of the most prayer filled hours of my life.  We took off, flew over the Chesapeake Bay, up the Little Choptank River and at a low altitude I literally waved to my parents who were out in their yard on the river confused over the plane that was buzzing them.  But still they waved back.  On the return trip to Quantico he let me take the stick and fly the vintage plane myself.

It was an experience I will never forget.

After he retired and moved to Florida I didn’t see him too much.  I would send him our Christmas letters and keep in touch by email.  Sometimes I would email him blog posts.  If he was up in Northern Virginia we would meet for dinner and maybe have a couple of beers, occasionally with Kim and his wife Barbara, but most of the time just the two of us.
As his Parkinson’s progressed, dinner and beers became more lunch and ice teas.  He liked to talk about the old days at Fairfax Hospital, the crew we worked with, and our days of experimenting with high frequency jet ventilation which I think brought us all closer together.  He liked talking about his kids, his grandkids, his great grandkids, and his wife Barbara who passed away a couple of years ago.

He always asked about my dad and how he was doing.  I didn’t always tell him the truth since my dad was a little ahead of him on the disease curve in my opinion.

The last time I saw him he told me that he thought I had a gift with structuring a story and to make sure I did something with it.  His approval meant a lot to me.

He would often say after discussing the days long past during our lunch meetings, “we had some fun.”

I thought of him as my mentor, teacher, attending physician, medical director, co-worker, surrogate dad, and my friend.

And now my friend, the heart of the wise is in the house of mourning.  Whereas death is the destiny of everyone, you have reached yours.  And if the day of death is better than the day of birth, I’m sure you are already in paradise.  As for me, if a sad face is good for the heart, then my heart is strong.

Rest in peace.

And yeah, we did have some fun.

Post Script:

The photo above is actually a Navy trainer my Uncle Ted serviced during the Korean War.  The plane Frank and I flew that day was very similar.

And remember to keep in your prayers:

Healthcare workers and their families. Remember “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy” (Matthew 5:8);

All those sick or compromised from the virus and all other health issues;

Those non healthcare caregivers working to take care of a loved one while isolated at home;

Families who have lost loved ones;

Those who have lost jobs and businesses.

And keep reaching out to those who may need some attention.