The Old Man

Old people have their memories.  I guess that makes me old.  I have memories of memories.  I'm making memories of course, but still.

 
I used to pick up an old man in the wilds of Maine on my way to work in Calais every day for a two year period.  He'd be in the same place in the woods early every morning with his thumb stuck out, waiting for fate to come by and give him a ride to see his sweety in St. Andrews, NB.  He was there in rain, snow, sun, fog and ice, in the darkness of Winter and the dim light of morning in Spring.  I picked him up almost every day there for those two years.  He was 86 when I first met him, and 88 the last time I saw him.  Some said he died in the cabin he was born in back in the woods on the old farmstead.  I learned what became of him after not seeing him for a few months.

The local Sheriff came by my place one evening with a picture of me.  "Is this a picture of you?"  "You know it is Johnny.  Where'd you find it?"  It was on old man Coggin's bedstead when we found him yesterday.  He'd been dead a month or more.  He was just layin' there, frozen like he was asleep.  This is all we found.  Did you know him?"  The moment started etching itself in my memories to carry with me all these days, "I can't say I actually knew him."  "Well, why did he have your picture on his bedstead?"  I really didn't know, "I gave him a ride to the border crossing station every day for a couple of years so he could cross and visit his sweetheart.  One day he asked me if he could take a picture of me.  I guess this is it.  That's all I know Johnny."  He started to turn to walk off my front porch with an, "Alright then."

But that wasn't all I knew.  The old man, whose name I never really knew until the Sheriff told me he was "Old Man Coggins," told me that when he was still driving, before the State took his license away, he tried to never use his brakes because it wasted gas.  It took me awhile to figure that one out, but I still remember.  He'd laugh at my life questions with, "Yer still shittin' yellow ain't you boy?  Gorry!"  He told me to enjoy the years of youth because old age lasts forever.  And he told me with a laugh that his neighbor, an old spinster used to boil his socks for him while she was still alive, and that one evening he came into her kitchen while she was boiling socks and thought it was soup and drank a bowl full of the brew, "It weren't bad neither!"

Just before he died, he was admitted to my "ward" in the Calais Regional Medical Center, known locally as "The Butcher Shop."  My charge nurse asked me to go in and clean him up some.  I remember still the dirt caked behind his ears.  When I asked him his name he told me it was 'Enry 'Iggins.  After that, every time I treated him I teased him about 'Is name and sang what ever ditty I could remember about 'Enry 'Iggins to the tune of "I'm Henry the Eighth I am I am,"  and whatever.  The director of nursing called me into her office one afternoon and asked me why I was "pestering" Mr. Coggins by singing to him, bringing up physical therapy equipment to get him out of bed, and washing my hands before and after taking care of him.  I thought she was pulling my leg.  I was like, "Well, he's had a CVA and that is how we treated our CVA patients back in Cambridge at Harvard Med, Mt Auburn.  We had great success in our treatments.  Mr. Coggins is never removed from his bed and is getting bed sores.  I don't want him to become infected, which is why I wash my hands before and after treating him, etc.  She looked me in the eye and said, "Leave Mr. Coggins alone.  He's had a "shock" and is going to die."

After that I was the one who had had a shock and soon resigned to do full time farming and self unemployment, Maine style.  I soon saw the Old Man by the side of the road while traveling to my new job as Architectural Illustrator for the Calais Redevelopment Center.  He never spoke of his hospital experience and I never asked him about it.  Now, I just remember the snow as it billowed around him in the dim light of January on the side of the road in Princeton as he stood waiting for me with his thumb stuck out waiting for me, like an angel with messages for me from Heaven.

Michael