had surgery at a New York hospital
and, after spending several hours in recovery, I was moved to a
semi-private room. They wheeled me up there at two in the morning.
At dawn, I heard moaning from the other side of the curtain.
"Are you OK?" I asked.
"Yes," a man said.
"I got here during the night. My name's Alan," I said.
"I'm John," he said.
"What happened to you?"
"I fell in the street and they brought me here."
"How long have you been here?" I asked.
"I'm not sure. I think it's a week."
As the morning progressed, the nurses came in and opened the
curtains and John and I could see each other.
He is from Guyana, has lived in Venezuela and Brazil and
traveled to many countries. At 72, he becomes disoriented at times
and, living by himself, is increasingly in danger of having an
accident.
His mind wanders back to his youth in Guyana, and he has trouble
remembering more recent events. But he has a love of language and
literature and, without a moment's notice, begins to recite, in a
beautiful baritone, excerpts from the Bible and other poetry.
We quickly became friends, and he pressed his case for being
allowed to go home.
"I understand," I told him, "but maybe you should listen to them
and let them evaluate you for a while with some therapy."
"I just want to go home," he said.
"You know, I've done all this traveling all my life and then
settled in New York and now have this little apartment where I can
cook for myself. I want to go back there."
As we talked, someone came in and told us about the space
shuttle disaster.
We turned on CNN and watched for a long time. The two of us,
guys who have been around the world a bit, but pikers compared with
the young heroes who ventured into the unknown and were a few
minutes away from making it back.
Like John and me, those seven people, with so much to live for,
just wanted to go home.
"You know," John said, "I think about Guyana and my life there
when I was young, and I miss it.
"It always puts me in mind of those lines from the poem ...
'breathes there a man with soul so dead who never to himself hath
said, this is my own, my native land.' "
"Maybe you'll get back there again, John," I said.
"I hope so."
Three days later, they discharged me from the hospital and sent
me home.
If they're right that life's a journey, the best part is coming
home.