Grace

The unisex bathroom at the doctor’s office was "occupied."
 
For whatever reason, I wasn’t expecting a woman to come out, let alone…
 
She passed me with a polite smile, and it wasn’t until I was inside that I even put together who I thought she was.
 
Couldn’t be… But maybe…
 
If it was her, I didn’t want to lose the opportunity to say something, but Sweet Jesus did I need to piss.
 
Stream fulfilled, hands washed, I rushed out towards the waiting room.
 
And the closer I got, the more it looked like her. The coarse, charcoal-dyed curls of her hair; her eyes, both intelligent and kind.
 
"Your name wouldn’t be Helen, would it?"
 
No recognition in her face whatsoever, just the faintest curiosity.
 
"Yes, I’m Helen F______."
 
I was absolutely dumbstruck.
 
"Helen, I’m…"
 
Couldn’t form the words, there was just too much to say. My hands went to my chest in an involuntary attempt to illustrate that I was talking about myself.
 
"It’s Eric… I used to work for your husband."
 
About three and a half years prior, I was hired through my agency as an underpaid secretary for Helen’s husband Joe. They had survived the Holocaust, and late in his life, Joe published three books chronicling their experiences through the worst of it.
 
I have tremendous respect for both of them, and I did everything in my constitution to aid his quest and spread his message of tolerance to the world. But in the six years I’ve worked as a home health aide, Joe was easily the harshest pain in the ass I have ever suffered to serve.
 
And it didn’t end well. I can’t really go into the meat of it, but the straw that busted the llama’s spine was when I grabbed the loose pages of Joe’s fourth, unpublished account, and sprinted out his front door not unlike a crazy person.
 
When Helen realized who I was, her mouth popped open, and you could practically see wind in her hair as the memories flowed back into her senses.
 
And she smiled with unquestionable delight. She stood up and threw her arms around me.
 
Wasn’t expecting that. But I was happy that it happened.
 
"You know, he died," she told me.
 
I did. I found out about a year ago and I sent her a ridiculously belated letter, not just in condolence, but as an attempt to bury the hatchet. I knew that she was the real reason I got fired that day. The letter went unanswered; wasn’t even sure if she got it.
 
"It was good what you did for him," she said.
 
I felt a roiling tempest of mixed emotions inside my chest. So many thoughts, so many memories. I wanted to tell her how sorry I was that it went the way it did. No hard feelings. He knew death was near. He was a ninety-three year old juggernaut when I met him. And he wanted his legacy to shine like a nuclear halo that the whole world could honor with reverence and awe. And the story of his survival was incredible and worthy of detailed acknowledgement, but it was just one of many from that horrific scar of human history, that ultimate failing of rational society. And within all of his poetry, all of his posturing, every single one of his impromptu speeches and low-def video recordings that he wanted to put on the internet–a mantra pulsated with an increasingly insistent rigor, a shattering kettle-drum underneath an aria.
 
He did not want to die. He wanted all his pain and loss to make sense, for everybody. And I did not have the resources to make it happen. I was still just a guy trying to make something happen in my own life.
 
"It was a turbulent time for all of us," I said.
 
I introduced her to my new charge Larry and his wife Dorothy. I started working for them through a referral from Jessie, good friend and the wife of my very first longterm client. Another client that had fired me.
 
I’ve been helping Larry for literally eight weeks straight. I kept both my other jobs, but I go from 8:00 to 11:00am, plus any medical appointments, seven days a week. We have breakfast, we keep up on stock prices and absorb a little literature. I get him showered, shaved and dressed, and then we spend the rest of the time working on physical therapy. Some walking, some leg routines, some exercises designed to encourage use in the right arm, the one just barely saved by an emergency surgery in the middle of the night.
 
We’re nonstop, but Larry is extremely easy going, and in comparison to Joe a consummate joy to take care of.
 
I sat down with Helen and attempted to catch up, touching on the barest outline of communication in those two minutes left before she was called to see the doctor. In spite of her ninety-one years on the earth, she is still meeting with groups of students and advocates to tell her personal story about surviving the camps ("It is what he would have wanted"). I let her know that I felt inspired by their story, not just the ordeal, but the love she had shared with Joe that was allowed to blossom and flourish beyond those razor-wired fences, beyond the tragedy of war and institutionalized hatred.
 
Her name was called. I fumbled to give her my number ("If you need anything at all…") and I went back to my new friends. I clearly looked like a hero to them. Helen gave no indication that anything had gone wrong, and I wasn’t going to upset the mystique. Before she left, she said, "You’re in good hands… Eric is a very nice young man."
 
We were still waiting by the time she came back out. "I seem to be okay."
 
She left arm and arm with her caregiver, a woman that had remained completely silent through this entire exchange. As she was walking away, Helen gave me one final look that intimated, resoundingly, "This is the last time we will meet." That’s all right. It was brief, but we said everything that needed to be said. I was just happy to see her again, and felt blessed by the way chance could allow for a little closure and grace in this life.