Driving Arthur

  

 

December 27, 2021

 Greetings from one indeed,

 It is interesting to notice how friendships form.  Not all of them look the same, which is a helpful thing to remember when you wonder where the next one will come from. 

 I thought of this as I spoke to my friend Ron.  I hardly saw our friendship growing until it was all around us.  I called him last week and told him I think of him every time I drive to Ann Arbor, and we both chuckled at that.  He told me something that he has said before, a bookmark of our relationship, and it brought tears to my smiling eyes.

 Several times a year for several years, I drove Ron to his appointments at UM Hospital.  It takes a little over an hour to drive, and sometimes a whole lot over an hour.  We did it dozens and dozens of times.  During those drives, and in waiting rooms and exam rooms and changing rooms and labs and clinics, we assembled a friendship.

 When we were in Ann Arbor Ron would tell me how much it had changed since he went to University of Michigan, some six decades ago.  And yet he could remember the main landmarks, most of which still exist.  He told me the stories of the places he worked, or this car he drove, or where he would go to get cheap food.

 At every appointment the staff would ask Ron to confirm his information and he would say his name was Arthur Watts.  This would always cause me to look up, since we only knew him as Ron, but Arthur was his given name, which seemed so much more dignified, nearly regal.  Ron is a gentleman, and dignified, but he will always be Ron to us.

 Ron is an excellent patient.  He has a nearly perfect memory for every bit of what is an extensive medical history.  He participates in the interviews with the nurses and assistants and doctors and specialists.  He knows his weight and blood pressure, how much water he drank yesterday, what his prescriptions are, to the milligram.  He speaks precisely and answers questions with remarkable clarity, a bright mind of nearly nine decades, which amazed nearly every doctor who sat with him.

 “Ron is really smart.” my Mom used to tell us.  He knows biology and chemistry and other smart things because for years he taught high school students the realities of science.  In fact, I learned more science sitting in exam rooms with Ron than I learned in my internment at Central High.

 When we drove to Ann Arbor Ron would tell me about fishing in this river or that lake, or going to high school in this town or stories about his father or his brother.  He shared a generation of life with me in samples of a few minutes at a time.  When I heard them the first time, and the third time, I didn’t always give every word the respect it deserved.  But I learned the stories and soon it was similar to hearing a favorite song on the radio.

 I sat in the exam rooms with Ron, helped him off with his clothes, and on with the ridiculous gowns.  I sat and listened, looked at the institutional art, read the notices on the wall, waited, talked about fishing and high school teachers and the Navy and my Mom and his grandchildren.  We waited together, which was something we wove into our friendship.

 The official people would come in and ask how Arthur was doing and they would take notice of me, and they would always ask: “And who is this?”  After ten or twenty times, we stopped trying to explain.  Ron would just say: “This is my son.”  In time, we both simply accepted it as the answer. When it was necessary for me to help, to answer, to be family, I was his son.  After a while, we simply created that truth as easily as our friendship.

 We drove to doctor’s appointments and chemo and radiation and surgery and check ups. We drove to pharmacies and to the barber shop.  We drove to the hospital to visit my Mom, and in time we drove to the funeral home to decide things there.  We drove to the place we scattered her ashes.  We drove to banks and the post office and lawyer’s offices.  I helped him into the car and buckled his seat belt, and we stopped somewhere and I unbuckled him and helped him out.

 Ron and I are from different histories, raised in different eras, we have different views on the world, on how things should go.  If you put it all on paper, you might question the potential to create a friendship.  I don’t know the solution well enough to share, except we didn’t try to fix each other where we were different, and somehow the differences just became like an unusual seasoning in some really good chili.

 When he married my Mom, that was our family intersection, our affinity.  But in the years of driving and waiting and listening and talking, we created a new bond, and there isn’t any better word to describe it than friendship.

 Ron moved to Texas and began a new life.  He says the people who work where he lives take good care of him, and one of his daughters is close by.  I don’t think I’ll ever drive him anywhere again.  You can fill in the blank that leaves in my life. 

 Friendships are unique, it is almost impossible to describe them in one way.  It’s as if two people were painting a picture together; each is contributing something that makes the creation different from any other combination of people.  What I have learned from Ron, along with a host of other lessons, is that creating this gift is often done when your hands are busy doing something else. Driving, for example.

  

Hope this finds you missing your friend,

 

David

 

 

Copyright © 2021 David Smith