9.11.01. Again. Not what you expect. Again.
Was seriously planning on skipping my yearly 9.11 posting to the blog. Then I had an 'NPR driveway moment' in the Costco parking lot.
It was a discussion about 9.11.
Blew it off.
Then I saw my 9.11 widow in the Costco. 4x, as if God was just taunting me.
Seems like he is doing more of that 'God talking' stuff than I am doing the 'Popkin listening' stuff.
Time to write, time to drink.
Time to listen to some of that infernal 'God talking' stuff.
So.....
Years ago I had to fortune to know a wealthy doctor. Son of a wealthy doctor, he was a man of style, grace, and poise, who could run a meeting (and I assume an OR) with order and decorum.
Although we attended the same church, he was very much of an insider, and I was very much an outsider (still am, btw), but he never made me feel that way.
We were peers, or at least, he made me feel that way. We served together on a couple of committees, as Presbyterians are prone to make committees about everything.
Not judging, just saying.
We had kids roughly same age as mine, wife a bit older but similarly spiffy as mine, but we were in very much different worlds other than that.
Yet I never felt that east/west divide with him.
Or the stunning old money /new money/ no money divide.
Or the infamous 'Docitis' that so many of my friends in medicine complain about.
He was just plain folks, as far as I could tell. And if I had never seen him in a white lab coat, I would never have made him for a Doctor, other than the dead give away of a great vocabulary and military bearing.
He could have been a professor or a retired navy officer, if you did not know he was a Doctor. He was that darn unassuming.
A few days after 9.11.01 he approached me in the hall of the church, outside of my Sunday School class.
'I heard some of ya'll were headed up to NYC to see what you can do.' he said softly.
'Yep, dunno what we can do, we just feel called to go.' I whispered back.
No reason for the whispering, just felt like it needed gravitas or something.
'Take this, then. You'll need it to defray some expenses.' and slipped me a few dead presidents.
Big ones.
Several of em.
Enough to defray all the expenses we could come up with, including a 'speeding tax' for an alleged 88 in a 65 zone somewhere in Nowhere, West Virginia. 0345- but that is another story.
That van could not do 88 off a cliff. IMHO.
We were bootstrapping a trip on a borrowed van, begged for supplies, and nowhere to sleep. Seriously- we slept on a trampoline in a church gym.
Bootstrapping, I tell ya.
We had no plan, no money, and no agenda.
We just wanted to help, and now we had a sponsor.
He made our trip into a hopeless situation possible, and we never really got a chance to thank him.
Not as much as we should have, anyway.
He died on the operating table right before Easter that next spring, and there has been in hole in my heart every time I see his widow and rapidly growing children.
I am not sure what to do or say, other than try to 'pay it forward' somehow.
And I saw her again today, Sept. 10. 4x.
After I had finally decided to stop talking about Sept.11.
You are tired of this old saw by now, right?- Skip the rest, then.
In the aftermath of craziness, when people with 'free will' do things that are clearly wrong, it gives the rest of us a chance to curl up in a ball.
Or shine.
Or 'pay it forward'.
And as I explain this to my kids, some of whom are not old enough to understand the take away from 9.11.01, I realize that praps none of us are old enough to understand it, until we decide to 'pay it forward' in our own special way.
So go out, and 'pay it forward'.
Are you a Doctor, in your own little OR world?
And how do you make your 'underlings' feel about that? The less polished, clumsy, inarticulate masses that make your job, life, and lifestyle possible?
Write that eulogy from their eyes, then rewrite it honestly. Will they still get choked up about you when they see your widow and kids, 8 years later?
Make that happen, and you have paid it forward.
Just like he did.
Kamran Popkin
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