When we first moved to North Andover, Massachusetts, in late
summer 2002, I made an effort to make new friends. Easier tried
than accomplished, even when you have something obvious in
common. An ancient bent geezer down the street from us spent a
whole afternoon talking about his and his family’s history in the
area, fascinating stuff, full of wit and humor.
Then I ran into the fellow a few weeks later, hailed him by name,
and found myself in the same conversation all over again, him
having no clue who I was.
I used to walk our old dog Cody past one of the rented houses on
the Edgewood Farm property. All winter long, at late dinner time,
I saw a lady with a shining face and long gray hair, obviously
talking to her counterpart at a small dining table.
“Boy, she looks nice,” I’d think.
The following summer, I passed that house, with its windows and
doors standing wide open, and from inside I could hear a fiddler
sawing away at “Soldier’s Joy.” I called out a greeting, walked
in, and found a man of about my age with a droll grin and a
moustache and a fiddle. That was Jim Walsh, the husband of that
very nice looking lady, Susan, who is the only female steward at
a major race track, Suffolk Downs. We are now all great pals.
But the one man I could never get to know I think of as the heart
attack walker. You can find him every day maintaining a grim pace
around the neighborhood, covering great distances, four and five
miles at a pop. I’ve nodded and tried to start conversations many
times, but no luck. Tramp, tramp, tramp goes the walker, in all
weathers and lights, and I can only imagine his story.
It will soon be mine.
ON OCTOBER 20, I HAD A HEART ATTACK, serious enough that our
neighborhood hospital could not handle it. They shipped me by
high speed ambulance to Brigham & Women’s Hospital in
Brookline, which cranks out bypass operations like a factory. My
attack did not come on with a bang, the way it’s portrayed on TV
— no, just a series of grinding little agonies taking place over
a period of many hours.
“You’re having a heart attack right now,” I was told. And I was
rapidly prepped for a triple bypass coronary operation, stripping
a big vein out of my left leg, waking up with an oxygen mask on
my face. I couldn’t get a breath high or low. My rehab sheet
says, “The most important exercise is walking.”
I have a cane. I have to set goals every day. I have to work on
getting about 20 extra fluid pounds off me, through hemodialysis.
“You have a new heart now,” says my wife Sally. “And you’re going
to have to walk regularly to get it working.”
Tramp, tramp, tramp. I will soon be joining my unnamed neighbor.
“Just give us 72-75 days’ worth of health,” my transplant
coordinator in L.A. told me. Then we can get back on course for
my kidney transplant. Excuse me a moment now. I have to go eat an
apple. I’m expecting a phone call from an old friend in Chicago
who has been through something similar. He’s in Boston now for a
five-day bridge tournament.
MY FRIEND AND I FINALLY RANG OFF after an hour of conversation.
We could have gone on all night.
“I expected you to sound weak,” Bob said. “But your voice sounds
strong.”
I am indeed weak. Puffed up with fluid when I was discharged from
the hospital, I pulled on sweat pants and just barely managed to
squeeze my feet into shoes. A tee-shirt, a flannel shirt over the
top, and a cap. Son Joe pointed out to me that I had been wearing
the same clothes for two days.
Time for a sponge bath — can’t shower with the new catheter,
which runs straight into my heart. That’ll be my first real
obstacle, dealing with the cold.
Thankfully, and surprisingly, I have come out of all this wanting
to live. Maybe it’s something Bob said, about how our fathers had
had the same conditions we have had — except that they had died,
Bob’s father at 57 and mine at 59.
“Who ever knew we were going to have to figure out what we wanted
to do when we grew up?”
First, tramp, tramp, tramp.
