Relief/Diner Online Submissions System

“Do you mind waiting out here?” My husband glances towards the room where his friend is hooked up to half a dozen machines, brain dead according to his wife. She had her daughter call to ask his friends to come and say good-bye. I wait in the hall of this bright intensive care unit, large oval command center surrounded by rooms with glass doors. Some closed off with curtains but most exposing the occupant to any passing stranger. I try not to peer into those spaces, keep my eyes averted from bleak possibilities that I’m not ready to consider. My birthday is this week – 50, half a century, old to the young and young to the old. Harold is 67. He was born only five years before my husband. Sixties contemporaries. My husband returns. “Let’s get out of here.”

Apparently none of the family is in the hospital. Mike says he is ready to go. Visibly shaken, we quickly head downstairs and out to our car. As we begin to pull from the parking lot, a white car pulls in. It’s Pam, Harold’s wife, and his daughter. My husband opens the window and lets them know we will come back. After parking, we go back into the hospital. We head upstairs, to Harold’s room. Pam isn’t there. We go back to the family waiting room, and there she is, looking tired and pale. We give her quick hugs.

Mike asks, “How are you doing?” “Okay, I guess.” I listen to them exchange surface pleasantries, a mask for the pain of the occasion. I drift, tired from the end-of-school year rush. Suddenly, Pam’s words catch my attention.

“You didn’t know the real Harold. After his first heart attack, he wasn’t the same. He wouldn’t do what the Doctor told him. They wanted him to rest and recover for surgery to unblock his arteries, but he wouldn’t. Just the other day he was mowing the lawn. The goddamn machine they made him wear kept going off. I’d hear it beeping and beeping. He just kept on mowing. He sure was a stubborn man.” A pause. “He beat me, too. Couple days ago, he was standing at the foot of my bed. I’d just got back from the doctor – I was sick. He started screaming at me. He’d a hit me, like he used to, if my daughter hadn’t stopped him. That’s the real Harold.”

Mike looked shaken. He hadn’t expected Pam to express her pain in a matter-of-fact voice, devoid of almost all emotion. I’d detected a shade of relief, and maybe remorse. What stood out was the phrase, “like he used to.” She continued to tell us how Harold abused her. Mike didn’t know what to do or how to respond.

“I thought all men were like that, cause of my father. That was Harold. That was Harold.” Pam wiped the tears from her eyes and was silent. Soon after, we said our good-byes and left.

When we turned the car around, to offer our understanding and support to the grieving wife of my husband’s friend, the shape of that grief was not yet revealed. Soon after these unsought revelations, we left. No funeral was planned. Harold didn’t want one, Pam had explained. And anyway, there isn’t any money. So, no celebration of a life would be made. All the wires and tubes were removed a week later.
Mike was unnerved by knowledge he didn’t need and didn’t want about Harold. His memories of a man who freely offered his help and smiled easily were torn in two by Pam’s revelations. Mike was forced to view a different face of his friend Harold, a face he’d always keep hidden away. But, was that the "real" Harold? We all have faces we keep hidden away from the world. Certainly, Pam had suffered in her marriage. And there is no excuse for physical abuse, or even mental abuse.
But, that wasn't all Harold was - he was a good friend. The words of his wife didn’t change the friendship he’d always freely given to many people, including my husband. His life cannot be reduced to one simple statement. He was a complex individual - he was human. The smiles and the anger, the love and the insecurities, and much, much more: that was Harold.