I look around and see my neighbour sitting on his stoop smoking a cigarette. A single man near 60. He was the victim of a hit and run about a month ago. He was following all the rules, doing everything right, but it simply did not matter. Suddenly, out of nowhere, he is flying through the sky.

And when he landed his jaw was broken, his face covered in lacerations, his body traumatized. They probably told him he was lucky in the ER. Upon release he was so ashamed of the way he looked that he would not answer the door or come outside, and the soup Rachelle made for him had to be delivered through an intermediary so she would not see the man inside the dark apartment.

His quiet pain.

He doesn’t see me yet, and looking at him I notice how much thinner, how much sadder he looks in this unguarded moment. And then he spots me, and I realize that he is probably thinking exactly the same thing about me.

And so we just nod at one another.

And saying nothing, let the thin sunlight of the day fall upon us.

Sometimes, I wish I could construct his memories.

The three of us are out in the woods. A perfect autumn day. Jones is beaming, amazed by everything, and Rachelle is the light that made him, brought all this into being, and I know that sounds corny but it’s true. It just is. The wind passes through some branches and a tree casts red leaves like sparks. And I envision suddenly waking into this holy moment. Jones climbing a hill, pulling himself up by the exposed roots of trees, Rachelle, smiling and laughing, chasing after him. The colours and smells all so vivid and ancient, and what were the odds that this would become my life? What miracles have fallen upon me?

But I know I cannot keep up with the robust play. I will sit in the car. Recharge my oxygen. Wait for them to get back. And as we are waving goodbye and shouting encouragements I lose myself to the inevitability of watching these two do things I cannot, of watching them move further away from me and deeper into this world, and as I am making this transition Rachelle asks if I heard that.

I am in the forest again and Jones is holding out a stick, looking at me.

Heard what?

He said, “I carry the fire.”

And it takes me a moment. The phrase, “You carry the fire,” from a book I loved about a nearly spent man trying to shepherd his son through a dangerous landscape. Foolishly, I used to repeat the phrase to Jones when he was younger, hoping to instil some beautiful purpose within, but it never took. Jones never repeated it, and soon enough I just stopped saying it to him and let it fall away, but now, standing before me with a perfect, red maple leaf pierced through its heart on the stick he was holding out, he says, “Look daddy, I carry the fire.”

That moment that easily could have slipped away– and would have if not for Rachelle’s intervention–now alive forever, blazing in a forest.

Lucas Stanford 52:

“I was sick with cancer. It was advanced and I wasn’t expected to survive. I was still a young man, not yet in my 30’s, my entire life still in front of me. I felt I had wasted all I had been given, that I had lived too critically, enumerating dislikes and never living a joyous, unguarded life. If I were to survive I would say yes to the world, to all the people in it, to myself. And whenever my parents drove me to the hospital for treatments, I would listen to this song, and as I did so we would pass green fields where high school students played sports and fell in love. And I saw in them something holy. Their breath on chill mornings a visible sign of optimism and momentum.

And Van Morrison’s voice so confident and vital– a primal, beautiful and ancient thing. He embodied that deep in the gut wont to fall in love, to survive for somebody:

“And I will not remember
That I even felt the pain.
We shall walk and talk
In gardens all misty and wet with rain
And I will never, never, never
Grow so old again.”

The song is alive. Listening to it is like watching a shoot growing. It offered me life and I took it. I survived for somebody. It changed everything.”

The brown, tanned stump of one of his legs is visible beneath his hospital gown, and a small tower of IV’s and various bags of fluid loom over him. It’s a hot, gritty day, and he stares blankly across the street at a Tim Horton’s, indifferent to the people passing by. He doesn’t care what anybody thinks of him. These are almost certainly amongst his last days. He has a large bottle of Jack Daniels he’s taking hits from, and this seems some manner of providence, as if a last wish granted.

************************************

Rachelle: Oh.

A college-aged woman is making her way through the crowds. She’s wearing a big sweater over which she’s pulled a down vest. Her smile is warm as she cuts through the crowd, a long skateboard tucked beneath her arm. She looks so healthy, so confident, so effortlessly beautiful. It is impossible not to imagine her life, to see her her boldly meeting each new challenge she faces in this fresh world. She must skateboard through the city each day, her foot slapping the pavement as she goes faster and faster. Popping over streetcar tracks and swerving around trucks, she is the glowing velocity of youth. And then she materializes in the hospital like an answered prayer, and for a moment all our boring suffering falls aways, and there is nothing but the hope of spring.

And then closer, there’s birdsong. A long winter finally breaking. Something remembered in the bones, something hopeful returning. And everybody in the elevator at the hospital feels this, too. We’re packed tightly together, but everyone is boisterous and chatty. Like we’re going on an adventure. The porter flirts with another worker, both of them speaking in accents the other can barely decipher. But it doesn’t matter. People are smiling and feeling pretty. Making eye contact and laughing. And the doors open again and a middle-aged couple walk in. The woman, who looks bulletproof, like she commands vast industries, is crying. The man beside her holds her hand. Biting his lip, he looks down. And the way she stood there, looking straight ahead while the tears ran down her face. So unashamed, so brave. The rest of us fell silent in the face of their suffering. Shuffling about we made a little more room for them, letting them penetrate through to the middle. And so we quietly encircled them, and knowing not what else to do, we stood with them and their grief as we descended through the hospital, and then watched as they stepped out into the day, their lives forever changed.

On the eighth floor of the cardiac wing at the Toronto Western Hospital a man sits on a bench near the elevators.

This man has his shoes and socks off, his winter coat on. His feet, which are both resting lightly upon one of his wet shoes that he had turned on its side and covered with a sock, look swollen and cracked. Painful. He sits like this, his eyes closed, the palms of his hands facing upward, his lips moving gently. He has been called to prayer. His feet must not touch the ground. Behind him, there is a window through which you can see a huge, blue sky. The sky looks like it goes on forever. It looks like it’s everywhere. Sunlight takes seven minutes to reach the earth, and at the end of the journey it falls through this hospital window, illuminating a praying man. It’s all such a mystery. And all the people streaming in and out of the elevator give him a hard look when they first catch a glimpse of his exposed, wounded feet, but after a moment the looks become softer, much softer– each one of us there, now in the midst of prayer, too.

A couple who look like they’ve been together for a very long time sit in a waiting room at the Western Hospital. The man looks anxious and uncomfortable, maybe even angry, and his wife will not intrude upon that. Holding her purse primly– like she was in church– she sits with her knees together staring straight ahead. She will not say a word. She will not move a muscle. They don’t look at one another. The tension in their lives a living thing, a creature that travels great distances and will not go away.

And in the foyer there is a Book and Bake sale taking place. A very skinny woman in a motorized wheelchair is looking at the cupcakes. She’s wearing a pink kerchief on her head, in honour of Valentine’s Day, and she is thumbing through a book called Rogue Angel.

All the donated books there. Books thumbed through on beach vacations, books that changed lives or passed right through them. All these stories moving through time, intersecting, and ultimately reducing to the same story: How will I live, how will I die? And at the kiosk beside, there is a long lineup for the Lotto 6/49. Doctors and patients alike. Pretty nurses are scrolling their phones as they wait, men in hospital gowns clutching IV stands, people visiting loved ones. Each person having a plan for the money, each one hoping for something–a candy apple red Corvette, a promising drug, some safe horizon. Past them and outside, through slush and snow I step into a taxi. I am tired and my oxygen tubing has caught on the door, and as I am trying to disentangle it, the sudden astonishment of a female driver speaking to me. Her accented voice from far away, the subtle trace of her perfume, like light falling on water.

The morning is all freezing rain.

I have to wear a big blue poncho over my oxygen concentrator so that the moisture doesn’t damage the machine, and the tiny ice pellets coming into contact with it sound like kernels of corn popping, like flames crackling. Jones and I are happy enough. The rain, neither liquid nor solid at this point, is sparking freshly off our faces, it’s chemistry in the process of revision as it tumbles from one form to another.

Ted, who works for our landlord, is outside. He seems ancient, like he was born from the earth rather than flesh. His exterior more bark than skin. And he is reaching into a bucket of salt and bare-handing it onto the sidewalks. Like he’s feeding chicken. Like he’s scattering seeds. Up and down the street he wanders.

Jones and I make our way slowly and carefully toward daycare. Jones stopping for every fallen thing.

Jones climbing every mound of snow. Jones stomping every plate of ice. Before us are men shovelling the snow and slush from their part of the sidewalk. Maybe four or five of them stretching up the street. Each one feeling useful and alive in the elements, each one happy to have a weight to carry. A need to fill. Each one smiles and waves as we pass. My oxygen concentrator venting beneath the poncho so that it billows at regular intervals, pulsing– puffing out and then receding, again and again. Jones small and wild beside me, we’re anime characters now, passing through the ghost clouds of the day and into the great and mysterious universe waiting beyond our sight.