June
6, 1994
Frank has been sick lately, or so his mother reported to me today,
during one of my rare calls to that part of the world. I guess I needed to
gather in all the bad news at once. With Jimmy on the skids, I figured Frank
might also be having problems.
But then, Frank has been
suffering a slow deterioration for years, illness after illness striking
largely because he could care less about his health or how to take precautions
against losing himself. Jimmy, while walking in the woods Saturday, said Frank would
likely survive us all, despite his illnesses.
``Next century they'll have his
head in a jar,'' Jimmy said. ``He'll tell the computer `Next Page' and some
mechanical arm will come out and turn the page of his comic book for him.''
Frank has always lived with
convenience in mind, a narrow little orbit of mother and home, all designed to
serve his needs. He was ill as a child, and suffered great bouts of bronchitis
yearly -- it hit him with the predictable regularity of a monsoon, and yet he
did nothing to avoid them, smoking constantly, eating badly, out late at the
bars for his social ritual too much like the TV show ``cheers'' to talk about.
For years he ran around with a
hernia-- which ``popped out'' as he put it. Only much later did I realize it was
his intestines popping out through a weak muscle. In one instance, it ``popped
out'' while we were being hassled by the police in Passaic. But there were
other instances too numerous to mention, and all apparently humorous to him. He
didn't get the first of these fixed until 1978, a full decade after I first
experienced one of his episodes with him.
A broken neck, hepatitis, as
well as an appendix brought him to the hospital many times before that surgery.
In one instance, the woman visiting the patient next to him mistook Frank for
my father, as Jimmy pontificated on the deathly color of his toes.
``Don't you ever take your socks
off, Frank?'' he asked. ``I mean your toes do need air from time to time.''
Yet even before the doctor's put
him on a dialysis machine, Frank had options. Diet, rest, quitting smoking --
and drinking, might have helped postpone or eliminate the need for the machine.
But he never stopped his vices. They were ingrained in him, all of them habits
by which he measured he life. He could no more give up beef or beer than he
could the next issue to Spiderman comics. Even now while struggling to get on
the waiting list for a new kidney and his three times a week washout with the
machine, he smokes, drinks, eats salt and beef, and rests in-between his
wanderings to New York City.
Is it any wonder he is ill? He
should be dead?
Yet, he seems to survive, and
talking with his mother only reaffirmed the growing suspicion that Jimmy was
right. He will outlast us all, if he can find a machine to keep his heart and
liver and other vital organs going-- or perhaps his vices will preserve him the
way some chemicals are used to preserve perishable foods.
``Turn the page, computer,'' he’ll
say, and there before him will be our life histories in comic book form.
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