things happen in 3s, right?

life, near death, death.

coincidentally, it’s september 11^th. death, right?

but i’m up in walnut creek, at the bat mitzvah of niece number 2. life, right?

simultaneouly…. it’s labor day, so i’m merrily off from w-w-w-ork, and…

the fat man is coming in from yuma.

 

for the entire weekend.

i’m picking ’im up at LAX friday at 7:30 p.m.….

until….

the tuesday before, the fat man calls:

“bad news.”

now, fyi, the fat man has this over dramatic way about him. sort of like seeing himself as the main character in his own movie called “life”.

but then again, the fat man did electrocute himself down in baja on our little sortie across the border. and then again, he did step right into that spring-release rat trap in my garage the last time he came to LA, trying to help clear the alley behind my out-of-the way garage. and he…

yeah, the fat man is, and has always been, an accident waiting to happen.

but c’mon, there’s a limit, right?

“real bad news,” the fat man says again, over the phone? “can’t make it this weekend,” he says emphatically.

“what happened, fat man?”

“you won’t believe it,” he sings.

“what happened?”

“got hit in the head with a softball. almost blinded.”

“whataya talkin’ about, fat man?”

“was walkin’ down the street, downtown yuma, on my way to work. wearing a brutal pin stripe suit, attaché case in hand. mr. jones, ya know?”

“yeah…….?”

“walked by this softball field, like the old caddy house in westbury, ya know?”

“yeah….?”

“never even saw it comin’. a foul ball. over the third base fence.”

“you’re kiddin’ me. that’s like a cartoon.”

“i felt this sharp pain in my face… the next thing i know i open my eyes… i’m lyin’ on my back lookin’ up at a crowd of guys in uniform.”

“the ball knocked you out?”

“i still got the ball’s fuckin’ stitches on the right side of my face.”

“holy shit!”

the fat man’s a tall, rangy guy. pretty fit for 62. a bit awkward, in a paul bunyan-ichabod crane kinda way. he’s a new yawk criminal abogado (attorney) in tex-mex yuma, the hottest place in america. he isn’t fat anymore like he was as a kid, but he’s still apparently that accident waiting to happen.

“are you alright?”

“don’t know. the doc said i might have a concussion. have to wait a few days. he said if the ball had landed an inch higher, i’d be blind.”

the fat man postponed his trip to LA until thanksgiving. with my blessings.

—————————

i call doctor bobbha on labor day. to tell him about the fat man.

doctor bobbha’s another childhood amigo who went the professional route… doctor/lawyer… like just about every one of my smart, new york jewish friends from the baby boom years. either to keep out of the vietnam war, or more likely, because that’s what they were expected to do. doctor bobbha’s been a shrink out in the suburbs around boston for a long-divorced time like a lot of my early-married friends. he did a great job raising his daughter with his wife, but after they let the young fledging out of the nest, they had nothing more to keep them together.

i always thought doctor bobbha too neurotically and profoundly smart for his own good, but life doesn’t much seem to discriminate based on IQ or SAT scores. six months ago, doctor ben was diagnosed with prostate cancer. he ended up not only losing the pesky little fucker to the knife, but also his bladder. he has to pee into a bag. thus, five months ago, doctor bobbha joined me in the near death, or more affirmatively-named,

the “i survived a life-threatening illness” club.

i had lymphatic cancer in 1989, hodgkin’s didease, and like many of life’s upside-down ironies, it was the happiest time in my life. it forced me to “let go”… to be appreciative of what i had in life. you know… i had to live one day at a time.

just like doctor bobbha had to with his diagnosis, his surgery, and his post-operative prostate-less and bladder-less life.

enough lessons for now, right?

but nooooooooooo! life has no mercy on high achievers, poets, bloggers, or paranoid shrinks. because now doctor bobbha tells me he’s

“back in the hospital – with – they don’t know what.”

“whataya talking about?”

“i had this pain in the neck about three weeks ago…”

“you were always a pain in the neck.”

doctor bobbha sounds like he’s 190 years old.

“yeah, well,” he wisps, “my primary told me to come in for an MRI at the end of the week. but i couldn’t wait. the pain was too much. so i go into the hospital, they take the MRI, and they find out the top of my spine is all fucked up with infection. they have to operate immediately. so they go in from the front of my neck to clean out all the eboli bacteria. i’m lucky my larynx didn’t end up with my prostate and bladder. then they wait about 10 days for my white blood cells to settle down, then they go in through the back of my neck, cut out two vertebrae, and replace them with metal.”

“holy shit!”

no wonder doctor ben sounds like he almost died. he did.

“so i ask the surgeon what the chances are that i walk out of the hospital alive. and he says that 10 days ago, he didn’t think they were very good. but now, he thinks, he can’t say for sure, but he thinks chances are 99 out of a hundred that i will.”

“that’s good, bobbha. i don’t wanna lose you just yet.”

“don’t worry. if i learned anything it’s that i don’t go down easy.”

—————————————————–

my wife, surya, is from indonesia.

we celebrated the 8^th year anniversary of her arrival in LA last august, and she just graduated from x-ray tech school last june. she had to pass the same tests as native-born american english speakers. it wasn’t easy.

she doesn’t have many indonesian friends. actually, she is interested in having them.

when she first arrived, i took her out to loma linda, los angeles’ most populous indonesian community, about an hour’s drive east on the 10 freeway. but afterwards, she said she had nothing in common with the seventh day adventist church goers, no matter how sweet or welcoming they were.

but one of her high school friends, junita, a big healthy and friendly girl, also flew the coup and married a near-50 year old american dude in east coast, new hampshire.

surya visited junita once for fall foliage, flying into manchester, and junita came out here to LA once too, about 5 years ago. the girls had a great time, going to universal studios, out to venice beach, and shopping, shopping, shopping. junita said it was the best time of her life. she wished she could move out to los angeles to be close to surya, even though her conservative husband, jim, wouldn’t think of it. and then junita… had a child, about three years ago. case closed.

until…. jim was diagnosed with an untreatable cancer… and… just a few years past his half century mark… he suddenly died. about a year ago. junita was devastated. she didn’t have friends in new hampshire, she was completely bereaved, and she had a three-year-old son, jimmy jr.

she called surya, and we invited her to move to LA; we’d try to help. but junita thought maybe she should go with jimmy jr. to utica, new york, to live with jim’s family, who also had children. junita didn’t know what to do. where to go. she was confused. she needed time. she flew to home to indonesia, to medan, sumatra. she stayed a few months with her mother and sister. after a while, she felt a little better. she flew back to new hampshire to try to start over. but she couldn’t. she was spooked. memories were every where. she was melancholy and lonely. so she flew back to indonesia.

two weeks ago she was eating a durian, that huge white fleshy east asian fruit that smells like a garbage can, when soon afterwards, her mouth blew up to three times its size. she went to the doctor, who said it was an allergic reaction to medication. she wasn’t taking any meds. her condition got worse. three days ago, her mouth was oozing white liquid and she was rushed to hospitals around medan – to no effect. wrong equipment, wrong doctors……. her family made a reservation to see a specialist in the big hospital in kuala lumpur, malaysia. 2 days ago, she was rushed to the airport at 2 a.m.

this morning. two hours later, junita died in the ambulance.

she was 28 years old.

 

shit happens in threes, right?

life, near death, and death.

the fat man, doctor bobbha, and junita….

life’s not fair, man!

whoever said it… was lying.

___________________________________

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