Saturday, April 28, 2012

A Transformation

I big thank you to Robert DiLallo at his excellent site, Boomers Remember When, for posting my blog "St. James Place" (http://boomersrememberwhen.com/2012/04/25/st-james-place-atlantic-city-late-1950s/) and mentioning my enovel Uncommon Glory. His professional layout and pictures of Atlantic City from 60+ years ago has transformed my humble and private memory into a glossy and polished article.


Copyright (2012) by James Hugh Comey

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

The Return of the Tin Man




Last Tuesday, at Hahnemann Hospital in Philadelphia, I met the Tin Man. He had been in hiding for over a decade. I had hoped that I wasn't going to ever see him again, but fate is fickle and has its own determined mind.

I met him for the first time when he was only five. He had been exploring the notion of gravity and falling and the possibilities of bouncing on hard surfaces. He didn't become the Tin Man that day. His elbow was only encased in plaster, a slight but painful fracture. Jungle Jim's and playrgounds and the allure of testing gravity, however, made my wife and me hyper vigilant.

Thirteen years later I received a phone call on Labor Day. I was told to report to a field close by. There had been a accident. When I arrived at the field, at the same time as a local police officer, I saw a crowd in the middle of the field. The police officer was a giant, maybe seven or eight foot tall. His shadow blocked out the Labor Day sun as the two of us walked to the crowd. He saw the individual sitting on the ground before I did.

"Oh sweet Jesus," he said, and his legs became wobbly.

I wondered if I should try to steady his massive frame when I saw the teenage boy on the ground. His left arm looked terribly wrong. Instead of extending out in a linear line from his elbow, as most human arms do, his lower arm was shaped like a U. His wrist was curved back around, almost even with his elblow.

The arm required lots of tin and steel, plates and screws. Scars remain today, two angry lines like railway tracks with spike marks heading nowhere.

In college, it would be the Tin Man's left collar bone. A playful wrestling match with a friend went wrong. His body found itself in the air again, and, when he crashed, the collar bone went from a horizental support beam to a vertical compass point. It would take a plate and many screws and tin to keep the compass point down. Today, when the temperature drops low, the plate, still there doing its duty, reminds the Tin Man of how cold life can be.

Various finger breaks and sprains have popped up now and then, but only splints were needed. It looked like the memory of the Tin Man was going to finally fade away. It looked like my son, Jim, was no longer going to be in need of metal supports and struts. The days of scaffolding, both external and internal, were over.

And then, last Tuesday, Jim was tempted once more by the siren song of gravity. While retrieving a soccer ball from a garage roof, he caught his foot 12 feet above the ground and began to fall to earth. Only this time, it wasn't his elbow or his arm or his collar bone that was on a direct collision course with earth. It was his head. Somehow, miraculously, he managed to almost right himself when his right foot and ankle made contact, taking the full weight of his body.

The trauma surgeon at Hahnemann Hospital called it a pilon fracture. Rods now extend outward from his skin below his knee to a super structure down his leg to a rod that runs right through his ankle. Eight screws are holding his lower fibula bone together. A second surgery will involve securing plates along his tibia to fix the shattered bone there. More tin has now been added to the Tin Man.

In The Wixard of Oz, the Tin Man journeys to the Emerald City to ask the all powerful wizard for what he desires most: a heart. But, the all powerful Wizard of Oz tells him, "A heart is not judged by how much you love, but how much you are loved by others."

In each of these gravity-defying mishaps, Jim has discovered that pain can be sudden and terribly real, courage is needed to put parts back together again, and the true nature of love is when it's freely offered by others, expecting absolutely nothing in return.

Copyright (c) 2012 by James Hugh Comey

The picture at the top of the blog needs the following explanation:
The sketch on the left was drawn by Jim to indicate where metal has been added to his body and to show the external fixator. The sketch on the top right was made by Dr. Susan Harding, the trauma orthopedic surgeon after Jim's first surgery, to explain the amount of work done and still needed on his right leg. The X-ray shows what a pilon fracture looks like. Jim's was 50 times worse.


Sunday, April 15, 2012

A Boy and a Man on a Cross

My enovel, Uncommon Glory, now has its own Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/#!/UnCommonGlory. Please visit the site, click Like, and help me to spead the word about this coming of age story about a boy and a man on a cross, available from Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Uncommon-Glory-ebook/dp/B006MINMJA.

Monday, April 9, 2012

Bang in the Face

Yesterday was Easter Sunday, 2012. Easter is a time of family and candy and laughter. It is a time of looking forward with anticipation, and, if you are old enough, remembering with a melancholy heart.

My granddaughter, Maeve, a five year old budding philospher and origami master, surprised us over the weekend by suddenly asking, "What is your favorite holiday?"

Each family member thought some and then declared their favorite day. Thanksgiving for autumn food and colors, Christmas for presents and lights and music, the 4th of July for picnics and fireworks, Halloween for dress up excitement. When Maeve asked me, I said, "I'll get back to you." Each memory that I invoked included my parents. Both are gone now. I am a 64 year old orphan.

My mother's absence was especially felt this past Easter weekend. On Good Friday, we are reminded of the scourging of Christ and the desertion by his own disciples. The fear of torture and crucifixation made his most devoted followers hide or deny any connection to him.

There was one, it seems, who did not hide. His mother.

Throughout His mocking and brutal beatings by a foreign power, she looked on. At the time of His death, nailed to a cross, His mother was there. I cannot begin to imagine the heart rendering pain that she suffered that day. Nor can I imagine her surprise, fear and then joy to discover that the son that she lost was with her again.

That's not completely true. My own mother died, and then she came back to me.

In 1996, my two brothers and I were called by my father to come to Florida. My mother, after a long illness, had gone into a deep coma and was in the intensive care unit of a hospital. The doctor met us outside my mother's unit and told us there was no hope for recovery. She was on a respirator that was forcing her to breathe. Her major organs were breaking down, including her kidneys. She was dying. The 4 foot 11 inch dynamo who my brother John called "Queen" because there were few who could stand in her way, was almost unrecognizible. Her iron will, winning smile and sharp tongue were gone. In its place was a swollen body that was being kept alive by a machine that was inflating her lungs.

My father, brothers and I agreed that this semblance of "aliveness," made possible by the respirator, was not something that she would ever want or tolerate, and we had the respirator removed. The doctor told us, without the lungs functioning,  her brain activity would cease after 20 minutes or so. There was an EEG machine to the right of her bed on a shelf.

How do you say goodbye to your mother? We were told that she might be able to hear us. One by one, we came to her ear and told her that we loved her, and thanked her for all that she had done for us. As we spoke to her, our eyes stayed locked on the blips of the EEG monitor. Twenty minutes passed and the blips continued. There was no breath, no movement. We tried to sound brave; we tried to hold back our tears.

At 30 minutes, the EEG flatlined. After a minute of the buzzing from the EEG machine, my brother John said, "She's gone. She's dead."

I leaned down close to my mother's ear and said, "The angels are here with you now, Mother."

And the EEG began to blip again.

My brother Dave said, "Holy Shit."

I looked at the monitor and at my mother. I said, "You are one tough lady, and we love you with all of our hearts, but it's time for you to sleep now, Mother."

The EEG flatlined again.

Spring and Easter are a time of renewal and rebirth. And sometimes, it takes a five year old granddaughter to help you remember the incredible power of love.

Langston Hughes wrote: "I stuck my head out the window this morning and spring kissed me bang in the face."

I think my favorite holiday is spring.

Copyright (2012) by James Hugh Comey