Several people who couldn’t be there on Saturday have asked me to reconstruct what I said. Because I spoke spontaneously, I don’t really know what I said. I do remember saying that I was terrified but that I knew the room was filled with people who love Joe and love our family, and that gave me great courage. I also have to say that I felt like Joe was standing right behind me.
I remember thanking everyone for being there – from both near and far. We are grateful too for all the Facebook messages (thank God for technology), emails, cards, calls, casseroles, flowers, prayers and loving concern – each and every one has brought us comfort.
A few days ago, my friend Nancy said that only I could tell the “Mom Stories”, so here is my mom story.
Our Joe was special. I know every parent believes that.
But we knew it from the moment we clapped eyes on him in the examining room, when he was in too much of a hurry to make it to the delivery room. We had that moment of checking fingers and toes and it was all wrong and very scary. Joe was born with severe club feet and a congenital lack of muscle nerve in his arms and shoulders. And he was tiny – barely over 5 pounds. Within a few hours a neurosurgeon told me he might have massive brain damage as well. Boy, was he wrong.
A year of medical interventions, physical and occupational therapy and surgery began. Luckily I discovered “Indian baby massage” so I learned to lay him naked on a towel and rub increasing range of motion into him with olive oil and lots of love. I did it nearly every day. For three months Joe and I traveled to Portland, Maine twice a week so that his orthopedic doctor could crank his feet down into a semi-normal position and cast them. Then another five months of once-a-week visits for the same thing. I should mention that Joe’s great grandfather, Robert Bayley Osgood, was considered one of the founders of orthopedic surgical practice at Harvard and Mass General Hospital. My orthopod at Maine Medical was afraid to operate on the grandson of so eminent a man in his field, so he sent us to his mentor at Boston City Hospital who put seven pounds of cast on a fourteen pound baby while listening to a Red Sox game on the radio. I left in tears and never went back. It really was a no-brainer – we went to my grandfather’s hospital, MGH, where Michael Ehrlich performed seven hours of surgery, and Joe endured four more months of casts to his hips. It took me all of that stressful year, the hardest of my life, to realize that Joe was having a lovely time. After all he didn’t know anything different than what he had.
Through it all, Joe had an alert focus in so small a baby, and a kind of curious beatitude. His sunny disposition never wavered in spite of considerable physical distress. We nicknamed him “Buddha Boy” – partly because the huge casts on his legs made it so he could sit up very early, and also he was nearly always placidly smiling out at the world with such happy wonder. He rarely cried except when the doctors were poking and prodding him.
The sad thing was Joe got an ill-fitting body. It never functioned very well, and it became clear that it never would, despite all our collective efforts. His physical problems were compounded by the weight he slowly put on through childhood. We worried that when he got to school, he might be teased, but he never was. Everyone loved our little gorilla.
The hard thing was, at 8 or 9, he could no longer keep up with his buddies and do the active sports they all wanted to do. I know it hurt him, but somehow, and amazingly quickly, he rose above the hurt and just carried on, keeping his sunny, friendly nature and developing his curious, and intelligent mind. Right from the beginning Joe excelled in school. His teachers complained that he never seemed to be listening in class – too busy passing notes and whispering to his classmates. But when they would call him on it, he would repeat back verbatim everything they had said for the past five minutes. It seemed like he just absorbed knowledge through his pores, with practically no effort. I never saw him do a lick of homework, yet he was in all the advanced classes at Kennett. He breezed through Northfield Mt. Hermon, and only began to apply himself when he got to Reed College.
More than his intellectual curiosity, his voracious reading and his love of all kinds of music, Joe cared about friends – making them, keeping them, having fun with them and taking care of them. As Lichen says on littlegorilla.net, he collected people. But he was discriminating too. Even as a little boy at elementary school, he had zero tolerance for dishonesty, injustice, bullying, and prejudice. And he grew up to be remarkably fair minded. He never cared one whit for material things – he could fit all his worldly goods in the back seat of his Volvo.
I think that the very best thing we all can do in Joe’s memory is to try to be a little more like he was. Smile more, contact the people we love and tell them how much we care, pass it forward, laugh more, hug everyone heart-to-heart, and keep our hearts as open as he did.
Let’s wish him godspeed on his new journey.
I recited this poem at my mother’s funeral in 2005, because it was so true to her spirit. All were welcome in her home and at her side. and isn’t it also so true of our Joe? Didn’t he meet us all at the door, laughing?
The Guesthouse
This being human is a guesthouse.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of all its furniture.
Still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks, The Essential Rumi
Jay Rancourt 12:03 am on January 20, 2013 Permalink |
Jojoboy, it’s 12:01, one minute into the third year without you with us. It is still so damn killer hard. Like Lichen, I wonder if you knew how much we loved, and still love you. You are the wind blowing through the trees. Mom