Since his dying father placed a hand on his and asked that his ashes be taken to Bloomfield, Iowa, and while there an envelope be delivered to a Doctor Francis Casparis, Roger decided that he had better do it. His father had said, "I have metastatic cancer, and I will be dead within a week." And his father insisted that the envelope go to Iowa with his remains. His father said that Doctor Casparis had saved his life and that the doctor would tell Roger about it, and would help him also.
Roger Leeth stood helplessly by his father's hospital bed. "All I need right now," he thought, "with the divorce and custody dispute, to have a father I hardly know make demands upon me. He is as much a mystery to me dying as living."
But at least Diana allowed Roger to take along their eight-year-old son, Craig, to Iowa. Craig had slightly known his grandfather and being along to take the ashes to the cemetery might help him. Plus, Roger could deliver Craig to Diana's parents for the summer, but Roger must deliver Craig in less than a week, because that was the time provisionally allowed by the judge.
"Craig gets the same crazy arrangement as I did," Roger mumbled as he packed the car the afternoon of his father's memorial service. By 4 p.m. Roger and Craig started the three days' trip east to Iowa. For the first few hours Roger drove through rain. "What have you been studying in school lately?"
"Not much."
"How's your math?"
"Okay."
"Do you have Social Studies?"
"Yeah."
"Do you use a computer in your classroom?"
"Uh huh."
"What kind is it?"
Soon Craig slept and Roger thought about the week he had spent each summer with his father: "Each summer at the airport Father would greet me with a handshake. In his suit he looked like a sack of bones -- joints stuck out through his clothes, his shoulders like an old horse. Once out of the airport, I read for a week. Nothing to do except sit silently at meals and wait for the final handshake at the airport. Father continued to work, made no difference whether I was there. He'd take me to the clinic with my book and I'd sit in the waiting room -- just I and the patients and his nurse/receptionist. The waiting room was full of patients no matter how slow Father was -- always moved slowly, seemed to take too long at everything. Father would appear with one patient and disappear with another.
"Occasionally, on a hot afternoon when undressing was not necessary, Father would leave the door of the exam room open and I'd see him sitting there listening. I remember him with a woman he obviously knew well. I could see him facing the open door, but from behind I could only see her shoulder. He sat for half an hour with his lips pursed. Occasionally he nodded. Then he stood, and came out to write a prescription. No 'good-bye' from him in the waiting room; but the woman smiled as if she had been healed of leprosy.
"Father placed his hand on her shoulder as they parted, as Diana used to touch me when we said good-bye. Before we were married her touch gave me goose pimples. No touching now for months. Our entire relationship overturned so that I am repulsed by the one who attracted me. She was as beautiful as a statue, a face with classical lines -- more Greek than Roman. Now when I remember Diana I see her clenched teeth and tight jaw, and the sagging neck which before I never mentioned; but it pleases me greatly that her neck will be as fat as her mother's."
Three days east across the United States, Iowa was as far as Roger unfolded the map for Craig to follow. Every day trying to find things to talk about with Craig until Craig finally put on his Walkman earphones or started to play one of his three electronic games. Every day with scenes of Diana before him: gorgeous and beckoning, ugly and hateful. Every day remembering the silent summers with his father, and then the few minutes in his father's hospital room, and hourly fingering the lumpy envelope to deliver to Doctor Francis Casparis, who had saved his father's life, and who was to help him also.
The rain was vicious for the last hundred miles into Bloomfield, the windshield wipers inadequate for safe driving. But at 11 a.m. on day three of their trek, Roger and Craig, shaking the rainwater from their coats, entered the Woodward Care Center, Roger carrying an envelope. They sidestepped residents in wheelchairs, passed the physical therapy room, then beside the glassed-in dining hall to room 121. "Doctor Casparis?"
A tiny man with wispy, ashen hair sat in a wheelchair between a neatly made bed and a night stand covered with photographs and stacks of opened mail. "Doctor Casparis, my name is Roger Leeth. My father was Doctor Lester Leeth. He died last week. He asked me to bring his ashes to Bloomfield and to deliver this envelope to you." Roger held the envelope in front of the thin person in the wheelchair. The old man glanced upon the envelope less than a second, and without looking towards Roger or Craig, slowly, almost automatically, placed it on top of one of his piles of mail. He did not lift his head high enough even to see Craig, but spoke to the space ahead of himself -- just above Roger's knees.
"When I was the doctor I made rounds every Sunday morning. Under my care no one had bed sores. I was the attending physician, and everyone saw a physician once a week -- Sunday morning, the day Jesus rose from the dead. Every nursing home resident has a right to see a doctor once a week. Where's the doctor now? Who cares for these people? Are you going to?"
Roger felt Craig's uncertain look as he stood squarely before Doctor Casparis, wondering how to respond. Roger reached over the doctor, retrieved the envelope and held it sixteen inches from the doctor's face. Craig edged away from the two adults. "Doctor Casparis," Roger spoke loudly, "I am Roger Leeth, the son of Doctor Lester Leeth. He died, but he wanted me to bring you this envelope." The envelope was flimsy, with a lump across the center. Roger wondered if it were a fountain pen, a memento of the early days of writing prescriptions. But Doctor Casparis quickly grabbed the envelope and handled it like a piece of junk mail. He flipped it onto the nightstand. It slid down next to a photograph of two young children.
Roger did not know what to say. Trying to communicate with Doctor Casparis was like the last few months' conversations with Diana. Standing over the aged man he also thought of his father -- the person he talked to not at all, a person he did not love or even know well enough to despise. He did not know him at all, nothing about him. This man in the wheelchair might as well be his father. Roger felt nothing for either man; and this one was an inconvenience, an obstacle to overcome before he could get an urn of ashes out of his trunk.
Craig stared at his father. Roger shrugged his shoulders, and bent down, deciding, since Craig was watching the encounter, to try once more and thus leave with a clear conscience. "Doctor Casparis," he was almost shouting into the man's ear as he carefully extracted the envelope so as not to knock over a photograph, "I am Roger Leeth. My father was Doctor Lester Leeth. He died, but he said I was to bring you this envelope. He said that you saved his life and that maybe you could tell me about it." He shoved the letter into the doctor's fragile hand. The doctor held it for a moment, slapped it on his leg, then as a child putting the last block on a tall stack, placed the envelope upon a mound of mail. The room was still. Aged man, middle-aged man, boy: silent. Craig squirmed nervously next to Roger. Doctor Casparis stared between the father and son, eyes focused a thousand yards away. Roger nodded towards the door and they turned to leave. Still focusing his eyes between them Doctor Casparis said, "It was 1966."
"What did you say?"
"1966."
"What was 1966?"
"The last time I saw Les."
Craig and Roger gaped at one another as though being addressed by a ghost.
"We grew up together and both of us moved away, but our folks still lived by one another. We missed each other for years on our trips home, but our folks exchanged information about us and passed it on, so we knew where each other was. In 1966 there was a conference on infectious diseases in Louisville. Through our folks we learned that we'd both be there and planned to meet the first night in the Hyatt Hotel restaurant.
"Les was sitting at a corner table, staring straight ahead, seeing no one go by. I was within two feet before he looked at my body, then up to my face. Took him half a second to recognize me. We hadn't seen each another for almost twenty years. He yelled, 'Frank,' and shook my hand until my shoulder rattled. As soon as we ordered dinner Les was telling about his divorce. Della told him, 'I can't compete with the clinic. I can't sit home waiting for you anymore. I won't go to another concert alone. I won't answer the phone again for you. But you don't have to worry about the kids missing you. They've never known you.' I was shocked, after not having seen Les for a couple decades, for him to rush into his problems as he did. When we were growing up he seldom talked." Roger and Craig looked at each another and nodded. The doctor was definitely talking about the man they knew. "I could not imagine a person as beaten as he was that night, probably weighed 83 pounds -- devoid of hope.
"As children we were friends, though not the closest when we were young. We went to church together. In those days kids of all ages were in the same class, not like kids in church today, imprisoned apart by age. One Monday on our way home from school I asked him what he thought of all the church stuff, the Bible and miracles and that. He said, yes, he believed Jesus had come back to life and he trusted that God loved him. He said, 'I've decided to be a medical missionary.' It was because of Les that I believed in God, and I am confident that his studying medicine influenced me later to go to medical school.
"But it was more than that. Les, since he was older than me, protected me as a kid. I was about eight, he around eleven, when some classmates got it in their minds to harass me, call me names during school, chase me after school. When Les saw what was happening we started walking home together. He wasn't much of a fighter, but he slugged a couple of the boys and he took a rock near his temple that was aimed for me, but within a week they stopped it, and we walked home every day for years. As we'd walk I'd ask him about my homework problems and he'd tell me how to figure out the answers. I probably didn't thank him. Kids don't always thank people, but I'm sure I didn't thank him because he did not expect or want it.
"That's what I told him on the night of our reunion. I reminded him of how he not only had protected me, but helped me get through school. One other thing: his family had a lot more money than mine. We were poorer than dirt. That never affected Les and me. In fact -- and I told him as he sat there in the corner with his eyes puffy and his cheeks red -- I told him how, when we were kids, that he never used his pencils to the nub. He'd use them half way and give them to me, and never in a patronizing way. I told him that I didn't forget it, and that I told my children about him, and that they didn't think of him as Doctor Leeth, but as 'the half pencil doctor.'
"We stayed in the restaurant until they closed at 2 a.m. I finally said, 'Les, if Della doesn't want to be married to you that's her choice. But it's your choice whether to keep practicing medicine. It's what you're good at. It's what God called you to. I'm sorry if Della doesn't agree, but the whole rest of the world does.' I asked him to stay in medicine for another year before making a final decision. I said, 'Will you continue for another year? Whatever you decide I'll honor.' He said he would, and that he'd write to let me know.
"Well, it wasn't a year, it was about fourteen, fifteen months, and I was starting to wonder, but at Christmas an envelope came including only his business card and half a pencil. I wrote back, but he did not respond, until next Christmas: the same message. For 22 years every Christmas, a business card and half a pencil, until nine years ago, he scrawled on the card, 'out of the medical business, but still in business.'
"Thirty-one years, after one conversation over dinner -- each Christmas, this present; and he wasn't sending those envelopes to tell me about him. He only mailed the first one for his sake, but the rest were for me. All those years he sent them to encourage me. We both knew which of us needed the most help, and neither of us had to say it. Doctor Lester Leeth was always not only my friend, but my hero, the man who taught me faith and courage, not just when we were kids, but by telling me the truth about his own suffering, allowing me to help when he needed it, and then showing gratitude for the rest of his life."
Doctor Casparis fell silent; then, looking confused, he raised his left arm onto his bed and rubbed the blanket slowly with his hand. His voice became weak, "When I was attending physician I made rounds here on my patients every Sunday morning. No bed sores on any patient. Everyone is a child of God. Every Sunday morning, the day Jesus rose from the dead. Where is the doctor now? Are you the doctor?" He looked toward Roger. "Then you ought to do something. Visit these people. Ask them what they need. Listen to them. Every Sunday morning ..." his voice trailed off. "Every Sunday morning ..." Then, his arm on the bed, his head on his arm, within a minute he slept.
Roger and Craig stood motionless listening to the Doctor breathe. When a cart of lunch trays clattered by, Roger put his arm around Craig and they walked from the room. In the hall Craig said, "Gosh, was he a doctor? Grandpa was a doctor and he never talked, when Doctor Casparis started talking he never stopped!"
They passed a room that did not smell good, and Craig wrinkled his nose and started to walk faster. Roger hurried to catch up with him. "I think the two doctors are a lot alike," Roger said. Craig looked back questioningly. Roger said, "They were both in the habit of saving lives. We'll discuss it again in a few years. I'm pretty sure you'll understand."
But Craig had left the conversation. He pushed open the last door and they stepped out into glaring sunshine. Craig led toward the car, ready for his Walkman. Roger paused to look up at the clearing sky and said, "Yes. A lot alike."
Our scripture: 1 John 3:18: "Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action." Join with me in prayer.
Let us hold before our loving God those people whom we need to love less with our words and more with our actions ...
Let us hold before God those times and places where we need to stop being concerned about ourselves and begin the habit of saving others' lives ...
Loving God, you have given us the example of your Son Jesus Christ, who loves us when we are not lovable to others, who loves us perfectly in word and speech and in truth and action. May the power of his resurrection lead us into his kind of life, as we join in his habit of saving others. In his name we pray. Amen.
Discussion Questions
Text: 1 John 3:18
1. What immediate responses do you have to the story?
2. If you could have a conversation with one of the characters in this story which would you speak with and what would you ask or say?
3. Do you identify with any character in the story?
4. When is it hardest for you to express love with words?
5. When is it easiest for you to express love by deeds?
6. As a child did you have a hero or heroine who helped your faith?
7. Did you know your childhood heroes or heroines long enough to see them suffer or to see their full humanity?
8. As an adult do you have heroes or heroines? Do you know the people personally, or from afar? How do they help you make your decisions, do your job, or live responsibility in your relationships?
9. In that Christ rewrites our lives, what from this story would you like to have happen in your life?