There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient.
Marilynne Robinson in Gilead
There are a thousand thousand people on any given day who cannot think of one sufficient reason to live this life.
There are a few thousand who will decide this is their last day.
There are a few who say goodbye.
It is enough for me to find just one reason to live today.
It is enough for me to help someone else find just one reason today.
One is enough.
Fully sufficient.
Our woodlot lies quiet this time of year. There have been numerous wind storm that have snapped trees or uprooted them completely and they rest where they have fallen, a crisscross graveyard of trunks that block paths and thwart us on the trails. Years of leaves have fallen undisturbed, settling into a cushiony duff that is spongy underfoot, almost mattress-like in its softness, yet rich and life-giving to the next generation of trees.
We’ve intentionally left this woods alone for over a decade. When we purchased this farm, cows had the run of the woods, resulting in damage to the trees and to the undergrowth. We fenced off the woods from the fields, not allowing our horses access. It has been the home for raccoon, deer and coyotes, slowly rediscovering its natural rhythms and seasons.
It feels like time to open the trails again. We’ve cut through the brush that has grown up, and are cutting through the fallen trunks to allow our passage.
We bought this farm from 82 year old Morton Lawrence who loved every tree here. After spending 79 years on this farm, he treasured each one for its history, its fruit, its particular place in the ground, and would only use the wood if God had felled the tree Himself. Morton directed us to revere the trees as he had, and so we have. When he first took us on a tour of the farm, it was in actuality a tour of the trees, from the large walnuts in the front yard, to the poplars along the perimeter, to the antique apples, cherries and pear, the filbert grove, the silver plum thicket, as well as the mighty seventy plus year old Douglas fir, Western hemlock and Red cedar trees reestablished after the original logging in the early twentieth century. The huge old stumps still bore the carved out eight inch notches for the springboards on which the lumbermen balanced to cut away with their axes at the massive diameter of the trees.
He led us to a corner of the woods and stood beneath a particular tree, tears streaming down his face. He explained this was where his boy Lawton had hung himself, taking his life at age fourteen, in 1967. Morton still loved this tree, as devastating as it was to lose his son from one of its branches so unexpectedly. He stood shaking his head, his tears dropping to the ground. I knew his tears had watered this spot often over the years. He looked at our boys—one a two year old in a pack on my back, and the other a four year old gripping his daddy’s hand—and told us he wished he’d known, wished he could have understood his son’s despair, wished daily there was a way to turn back the clock and make it all turn out differently. He wanted us to know about this if we were to own this woods, this tree, this ground, with children of our own to raise here. I was shaken by such raw sharing and the obvious sacredness of the spot. Though Lawton lay buried in a nearby neighborhood cemetery, a too-young almost-man lost forever for reasons he never found to express to others, it was as if this spot, now hallowed by his father’s tears, was his grave. This tree witnessed his last act and last breath on earth.
We have left the woods untouched until now in our effort to let it restore and heal, and to allow that tree to become surrounded by new growth and life. We have told Lawton’s story to our children and are reminded of the precious gift of life we have been given, and that it must be treasured and clung to, even in our darkest moments. Morton’s tears watering this woods are testimony enough of his own clinging to life, through his faith in God and in respect to the memory of his beloved boy.
Morton and his wife Bessie now share the ground with Lawton, reunited again a few miles away from our home that was theirs for decades. Their woods is reopening to our feet, allowing us passage again, and despite the darkness that overwhelms it each winter, the woods bear life amidst the dying as a forever reminder. And we will not forget.
In our medical school lecture hall, George always sat on the edge of his seat in the front row. That way, he could be closest to the professor and not miss any detail of the slides projected on the screen, the nuances of the overhead projector diagrams, or the patients paraded into the lecture hall with memorable symptoms. From the first day, it was clear George would be the go-to person if one of us missed a lecture, as he kept the most accurate notes of any medical student in tiny neat almost verbatim script. To read his notes was almost as good as being there and he was willing, with coaxing, to share what he knew. He was, to put it simply, the best and the brightest among us.
Working on a double Ph.D/M.D. degree, he hoped one day to be a physician laboratory researcher in a teaching hospital, although getting that much personal information from him took much coaxing. He was a first generation college graduate in his immigrant family and their hopes and dreams were riding on his success. It was clear he was their bridge to success in their new home and new life. He rarely socialized with other students after class, nor did he join in study groups. At the end of the day, he would cram every book into his huge back pack, sling it over his slight frame and head out for the city bus to return home to his parents’ house located near the north end of Seattle’s Aurora Bridge.
My opportunity to work with George came during our first clinical experience in our first year of classes, working in pairs to interview patients in hospitals, practicing our skills at taking histories. When we divided up the questions beforehand, George was more than willing to let me ask about our patients’ family and spiritual support systems, their interpersonal relationships and sexual history, and their struggles with depression or other mental illness. He was much more interested in the detail of their illness and physical symptoms, so we made a good team documenting excellent patient medical histories. George admitted to me that talking to people was a challenge for him. His passion for healing was in the lab, in his future research and in his hope for discovery of new treatments for disease. He knew his best work would not be at the bedside.
Once our class started full time clinical rotations in hospitals in our third year, students were assigned in small groups together, working under attending physicians, residents and interns in the traditional teaching hospital hierarchy. Medical students do the grunt work for the medical team, with most of the patient contact being the duty of the medical student.
Despite his quiet nature, George excelled in the clinical work of his internal medicine rotation, and then went on to his 6 week surgical rotation. He was assigned to a particularly difficult chief resident who had a reputation for grilling students over the operating table about anatomy and being very picky about how his patients were cared for. George was always ready for the questions in the OR, never missing a one, and worked beyond the 36 hours on, 12 hours off schedule to make sure all his work was complete. He was barely getting home to sleep, just to turn around to catch the bus in the early dawn to head back to the hospital. One morning, in his exhaustion, he overslept by an hour, and rushed to arrive barely in time for 6 AM rounds at the hospital. He was unable to gather his patients’ lab results or organize information for the chief resident. When it was clear George was not prepared, the chief resident, irritated, told him to leave and not bother to return.
George grabbed his heavy back pack, caught the city bus and in morning rush hour, got off on the south end of Aurora Bridge and started walking toward home. He stopped in the middle of the bridge, set down his back pack on the sidewalk, climbed over the rail and standing briefly on the edge, staring at the water below, he jumped.
At his funeral, his pastor shared the following with his stricken family, instructors and classmates:
“George worked very hard to reach the goals he had set, in his hope to cure diseases. What we must remember is that to reach our goals we must pass over the deepest valleys of our lives. The darkest pit can appear to swallow us up. The Lord is there to bridge that gap as the firm foundation under our feet, ready to hold us up when we teeter on the edge. Don’t ever lose sight of the other side, where the valley will be no more.”
I hope, –no, I know—George is waiting for us there.
Barnstorming 