Medical Mis-Adventures--Part 2 -- Nepal, 1998

Miracle and Jubilee: A Thanksgiving Story

If words were pictures, and I could show them to you now, you would see a full December moon hanging over the Taj Mahal. I would describe a perfect white Christmas on a tropical island, five degrees north of the Equator, white sand, white clouds, white surf and white hot days.  I would show you gorgeous days “Down Under” when, in May, leaves were at full peak autumn color and the first winter snows were dusting the Great Southern Alps of New Zealand.

But this is not a travelogue.  This is, instead, a story of jubilee and thanksgiving.

A year ago this week I found myself in Nepal.  Trekking the Himalayas had been a long-held dream, but our Northern Hemispheric summer is not the time to visit that part of Asia.  Monsoons obliterate views of the mountains and the rivers are dangerously high.

Nepal’s season is November when days are clear, blue and warm.  Poinsettia trees are coming into bloom and the rains, recently ended, have cleaned the air and all around is a lush, semi-tropical green.  Views of the mountains are at their most magnificent.  It’s the perfect time to visit the Himalayas.

On the morning of November 17, 1998, my guide, Gorkha, and I flew into Jomson, a small village shadowed in the valley of the 25,000 foot Annapurnas.  From Jomson, our plan was to hike up to Muktanath.  At 4,000 meters, this was the highest Tibetan village in Nepal.  From there, it was, more or less, a seven day downhill walk to Pokhara, our ultimate destination.

These days were filled with magic and wonder.  Hiking would begin early and we’d punctuate our trek with long breaks.  By 2:00 p.m. most of the trekkers were settled into a tea house where we’d chat, play cards, read, journal write, dine with new friends then retire early.

This was how I spent those first, exhilarating days in the Annapurnas.  By the fifth day, however, I was ready for a break, and the village of Tatopani was the perfect place.  It was the largest town on the Annapurna Circuit for good reason; it was almost home to multiple hot springs that kept trekkers in the village for days.  It was the ideal location to rest tired muscles, and gear up for the two remaining days of hiking. 

And that is what I planned to do, until…life took one of those…unexpected twists.

Now…be warned…the story that develops is mighty low on the scale of human misfortune.  It is, simply, a cautionary tale, a thanksgiving metaphor, a lesson in miracle, and an encounter with the divine.

On the morning of November 20^th, I decided to start the day with long soak in one of the hot springs.  Now, these springs lay on the banks of the Kalikandaki River, and for those adventurous, or foolish enough, the sport was to heat up in the springs then dash into the river a plunge in.  This was no balmy act; the water was icy cold, glacial runoff, but there were plenty of crazy people on the Circuit, and we’d soak up the heat until we couldn’t take it anymore, then jump into the river.  No problem there, until…the final plunge…when I landed on an incredibly sharp object.  I knew I cut myself, but had no idea the extent of the injury until I hobbled out of the water. Blood was gushing from my foot, and when I lifted it I could see tissue and fat hanging out of a deep, two inch laceration.  The bleeding would not stop and the only way to control it was through tourniquet.

I tried to be as unobvious as possible, and managed to wrap my foot in a sock, gather my things and begin the slow walk off the beach and up the stairs to the tea house.  Immediately, I strapped on First World assumptions.  This is just a gash, I reasoned.  I’ll go the emergency room.  It needs stitches and all will be well.

Gorkha saw me first.  I showed him the foot and said, “I need a doctor; take me to the clinic.”

Well, it didn’t take long for initial assumptions to be shattered.  I was in Nepal, not Plattsburgh.  How presumptuous of me to assume there was an emergency room in this town.  There wasn’t even a clinic in Tatopani, nor was there a doctor, or a nurse or any medications to ease the pain and stave off infection.  The nearest town with anything close to a medical facility was easily a ten hour walk away.

But then a series of miracles began to unfold.  Oh, not the miracles of Biblical proportion, but the subtle little events that you just know are the acts of an omniscient God.

One never really hikes alone in Nepal.  You’re constantly bumping into people you’d passed earlier on the trail or met the night before in another town.  From the beginning of this hike, I’d unofficially teamed up with Michelle Jones, of London.  We’d been on the same flight, our guides knew each other and Michelle and I seemed to have the same destinations in mind.  She’s start our earlier than I, but my mid-day we’d connect for lunch and seemed always to stay in the same lodges.   We had a lot in common and she fast became a good hiking companion.

I was sitting in a chair in the garden of the tea house, foot elevated, trying not to think about my foot.  No one was quite sure what to do.  I wasn’t surprised, then, when Michelle emerged into the garden and asked what happened.

Like me, she knew the full extent of the problem.  We discussed options.  There was no way I could walk.  Gorkha suggested I be evacuated by helicopter—for $2,000.00.  But two thousand dollars was two month’s budget, and it certainly wasn’t an option, at least for the moment.  But, in the tropics, where all sorts of microscopic creatures lurk, expediency was a priority. 

Michelle did what, I suppose, many of us would do.  When help isn’t immediately available, the best thing to do is go out and find it.  And so she went, angel that she was, onto the trail, stopping people as they approached.  And then the first miracle began to reveal itself.

In the end she found sutures, a half bottle of antiseptic and a used needle.  Others at the tea house contributed items a surgeon might need: gloves, an irrigations device, Betadine, bandages.  Fine supplies, if you’re a doctor with the skill and know-how to use them.

A young British couple entered the garden and questioned the gathering crowd.  Did I need help? they inquired. 

And this was the second miracle.  Both of them were physicians.

Sarah and Peter took control.  They assessed their limited equipment, issued orders: boil the needle, bring scalding water, layed out supplies in order of need.

And so, in the garden of a Nepalese, tea house, on a stunningly beautiful mid-autumn morning, these two doctors, using a limited reserve of medical tools. Stopped the bleeding, cleaned the wound, stitched it up and said, simply, You must leave now and return to Pokhara as quickly as possible before infection sets in.

And so I bid farewell to my new-found friends I’d met along the way, thanked Sarah and Peter.   Michelle gave me her bamboo hiking stick, we hugged, and I was off.

But some things are never simple.  Gorkha had ordered a horse, but in order to get to the horse I had to climb a considerable distance up, and over, a huge landslide.  And so, with new stitches, we set off for the long, difficult hike to the horse.  Good Gorkha, who’d never experienced this sort of thing before, carried everything.  Never did he stay more than a few feet away from me.  Step by step, walking on the heel of my right foot, I made my way over the slide.  Four hours later we arrived to where the horse was waiting.

That night, wrapped in a sleeping bag, I sat on the stoop of the simple guest house Gorkha had found.  I was the only Westerner there that evening and I felt really alone.  Finally, the fears flooded in.  Would the stitches hold?  Would I get back to Pokhara without infection? Would I have to end the trip? Would I lose my foot?

Looking deep into the clear, inky, star-studded skies of Nepal, I remembered what my friend Margie had written to me earlier when I’d asked her to keep me in the light because I was doing this trip alone.  Of course you’re not doing this trip alone.  God is with you all the time, she wrote back.  And I remembered my mother, who daily circled me in God’s care.  And I thought of every God imagery I’d learned and I knew, just knew, that at that moment I rested in the palms of a loving, protective God.  It was then that I was able to turn it all over and say, It’s in your hands, God.  This is too much for me.

And a great peace came over me that night, and a confidence borne of Christian faith, and I was absolutely convinced that I’d been cared for that day, and that I would continue to be cared for that night, the next day and every remaining day I’d be away.  In the midst of fear and aloneness, I felt the presence of God and experienced what the writer of Hebrews had written: I will never leave you or forsake you.

Well…Gorkha and I, the faithful horse and its owner finally made it to the trailhead.  Two hours later we caught a bus that brought us on a nightmarish ride out of the mountains to another town where Gorkha hired a cab.  Ultimately, I did get to an emergency room—33 hours after the accident.  Two doctors examined the foot.  It was clean and uninfected…and…the stitches had held.  They simply rebandaged it, gave me a Tetanus booster, a ten day supply of antibiotics, complimented the good doctors from the UK, and said, “You’re a lucky man.  The Buddha was with you.”

Later that week I moved on to Kathmandu, reconnected with friends I met earlier, and together we shared a Thanksgiving dinner.

How coincidental, I though, that this occurred during Thanksgiving week.  The metaphor wasn’t lost on me.  I wasn’t observing the holiday in the traditional sense, but it had been a week of powerful thanksgiving.

I thought of Michelle and her selfless act of tracking down surgical supplies. 

I thought of strangers who provided needle and suture.

I thought of Peter and Sarah, good Samaritans, who’d performed the surgery under difficult conditions and with true Hippocratic spirit.

I thought of Gorkha, who stayed with me right to the end and lever left me out of his sight.

I thought of all those praying for me at home, and I knew, again, that this had been no coincidence, but a well orchestrated miracle.

I think of this story often, and on many levels.  Over the past year it’s gone beyond a simple story of care and ultimate thanksgiving.  It was, after all, a minor injury, corrected under extraordinary circumstances.  But after months of traveling through Southeast Asia, living and mingling with some of the world’s poorest people, I began to see how privileged I really was.

I’d taken for granted many of the peripheral events in this drama.  It was sort of fun to come out of the Himalayas on a horse.  “How romantic,” one trekking friend commented.  “Riding off into the Nepalese sunset.”

I never considered our two hour taxi ride back to Pokhara as anything more than a two hour taxi ride getting an injured patient to hospital.

I never stopped to think about the immediate attention I received.  Two doctors consulted with me and a third intern was left to administer the Tetanus shot and rebandaged the foot.  Nor had I taken into account the lack of triage that evening.  I simply went to the head of the line.

It was only later that I put it all together.  As a Westerner in Nepal, I was given preferential treatment.  Doors opened for me that might not have opened to a poor Nepalese.  With dollars in my pocket, all things were possible.

In Nepal, where the typical income is about $2.00 a day, what would the average resident of Tatopani do had it been him who’d injured his foot?  Would he have been able to hire a horse, pay for the bus and taxi and double medical consultation?  Would he have been able to afford the Tetanus booster and antibiotics?  What would have happened to him in that village that day without even basic medical services available to him?  I think we all know.

Countries are poor, or rich, for a variety of reasons.  Nepal is poor because of forbidding terrain and tough climatic conditions; it’s poor because of its diverse social structure; it’s poor because, in a way, it’s still emerging from its feudal past.

To offset this, loans are offered countries like Nepal.  Few governments turn down the offer.  Ultimately, however, there is a huge price to pay—the piper must be paid.  Today, Nepal’s foreign debt is about six million dollars.  A  huge chunk of their national budget is used to pay back that loan.  Think of what those payments could do for hospitals and schools.  Think of clinics that could open, even in small towns like Tatopani.

There is a Biblical prescription for this, and that’s the year of Jubilee.  Levitical code dictated that ever fifty years debtors be freed of their debts, thus allowing those most heavily in debt a way out of their misery, a way to restore financial balance in their lives. 

In a few weeks it will be the year 2000.  Radical Christians worldwide are suggesting that poor nations,  like Nepal, be freed of their debt and creatively use debt payment for programs that will improve living conditions.  Indeed, this would be jubilee in a small country like Nepal.

Our bottom line probably recoils at this but it’s not a bad idea.  We, in this country, certainly have more than we need.

Well..Thanksgiving is over, but what was it for you?  Was it simply a day off from work, a day to spend with family and friends?  Did we even catch a glimpse of the excess we have in this country?

I have finally reached this conclusion.  As full, fat residents of the Developed World, I don’t think we have a clue.  It’s not our fault, really.  The only way most of us are exposed to the poor is through television, and we all know how numbed we are by that medium.

However, when we see human need first hand, it’s a bit more dramatic.

Two weeks after the accident, a little boy in New Delhi caught my eye.  He wasn’t speaking to me directly, but his words still haunt.  He was holding a tiny baby and his word still haunt.  “Milk please,” he said.  “Milk please.”  Like many of us, I adjusted my blinder, passed him by.  I’ve often felt guilty about that; and I’ve never forgotten him.

Last week I was coming out of the Farmers market in Montreal, when an elderly man approached me, asking for food.  Ahh…chance for redemption.  I’d promised myself I’d take off the blinders the next chance I had, and this was it.  “I’ll be back in five minutes,” I told him.  A sausage stand was selling hot dogs, so I bought him one. 

As I was leaving the parking area, I saw him smoking a cigarette.  Hmm, I thought.

On the way home, I figured I’d been taken, but I also knew that I’d done what Jesus would have done.  Later, I was thinking about the number of times Jesus had been burned, taken advantage of.  Certainly, some of those present at the multiplication of the loaves and fishes had been opportunities.  I knew I’d done the right thing.

You’d think I’d have all the answers after this year away, but you know something…I don’t.  But I do know this: we have to give,, and go out of our way.  We have to bend over backwards, take chances with people and run the risk of being swindled.  It’s was those strangers in Nepal did for me.

It’s what Jesus would have done.

It’s what he did.

(This was originally given as a sermon at first Presbyterian Church in Plattsburgh on November 27, 1999. When I decided to include it as one of my medical mid-adventures, I initially thought of adapting it for my blog but decided against it.  Twelve years and three months later, the original story still has impact. While the style and tone is different from my usual writings, the message remains the same.)

Medical Mis-Adventures--Part 1 -- Singapore, 1990

Singapore.  Early August. 1990.  Latitudinally, I’m one degree north.  I have a raging fever, although I don’t know it.

It’s a Sunday, and I’m poolside at the hotel where I’m staying.  I’m shivering uncontrollably and have no energy to do anything but lay by the pool, trying to keep warm, under a white-hot and blazing equatorial sun.

I’m exhausted and there’s no reason for this.  Only after returning to my heavily air conditioned room, when the sweats begin, do I know something is terribly wrong with my body.  My body alternates from being so cold I turn off the air con and wrap myself in every blanket there is in the room, to being so hot that I have to turn the air back on to avoid sweating rivers.

I rest a bit, have the idea that I’m sort of ok, and leave the hotel and wander around my neighborhood and decide to eat fish (I never eat fish) at Long John Silver. Only after eating, when nausea takes over and the sweats being again, do I acknowledge the need for help.

“I need a hospital,” I tell the young man behind the counter.

“Mount Elizabeth Hospital is around the corner,” he directs me.

Off I go.  I’m rapidly becoming the stuff of Emergency Rooms.  Luckily I have my credit card and suitable identification.

I check in. Someone takes my temperature, looks at my tongue, and pushes me into a cubicle.  My fever is dangerously high, but it’s in Celsius and it means nothing to me.

They ask questions and are not pleased when I tell them I’d spent all afternoon lying in the sun.

“But I was freezing,” I tell them.

Yes,” they said, “but it spiked your temperature.”

They can tell I’m dehydrated by the coating on my tongue, and that I need antibiotics to lower the fever.  I’m prepped for an IV then spend the night and a good part of the morning in the hospital.  By noon, though, I tell that I have to leave, that I have a flight to catch that evening.

“But you can’t discharge you,” they tell me.  “You still have a fever.”

“Yes, I know,” I tell them, “But the next available seat on this flight is in September and it just isn’t an option.  I’ve got to return to my hotel, pack, check out and get to the airport.

So I check myself out, against their good judgment.  I’m literally half way around the world and I just want to go home.

By early evening I’m at the airport waiting for the daily Royal Jordanian Airline flight from Singapore to Amman. It’s an absolute struggle just to sit upright.  I’m still sick with full-blown influenza, but I have no choice.

It’s a full flight...and long.  Twelve hours maybe.  I sleep, but not the good sleep the sick need to recuperate.

I arrive in Amman early the next day. There’s a huge time difference and my body is on Asian time.

I catch a taxi to my hotel, shower and crash, waking up seven or eight hours later.  It’s late afternoon in Jordan, but could be the middle of the night in Singapore.  My entire body clock is off kilter.

But I feel remarkably better.  And hungry.  My natural curiosity tells me to hit the streets, take a look around, have some dinner.  So I decide to take a walk.

Downtown Amman.  Late afternoon rush hour.  I’m just wandering around, getting a feel for the place, when I meet a small group of young men.

One of them asks me: “Are you a Christmas man?”

I know what he’s really asking.  Am I a Christian?  The irony isn’t lost on me.  I love Christmas so, yes, I think to myself, I am a Christmas man.

But I don’t want to embarrass him, so I respond.  “Yes, I’m a Christian.”

Passions in the Middle East are high at this moment.  Kuwait had fallen five days earlier to Iraq and support for Saddam Hussein was running high.

I do not have my wits about me.  I still have a fever, albeit lessened, and my body is pumped up with antibiotics.

“Are you American?” one of them asks me.

Hmm, I think.  Not good.  I tell them I’m Canadian, that I live in Montréal.  It’s not the first time I’ve played the Quebec trump card.

"Bad,” another one says.  “Friend of America,” he hisses.  He catches me off guard and pushes me off the curbing, into the street.  Fortunately, there was no oncoming traffic.

OK, I tell myself.  Get yourself out of here…now.  Just walk away as quietly as possible.

Which is what I do.

I get back to my hotel, but the seven hour daytime sleep, coupled with the who-knows-how-many-hours time difference there is between Singapore and Amman, prohibits my body from sleep. 

Nine o’clock.

Ten o’clock.

Two a.m. 

I dose, only to be awakened by a Muslim call to prayer.  My hotel is right night door to a Mosque.

I simply cannot sleep and have heaps and heaps of time to think. 

I develop a plan.

By 8:00 a.m I’m out the door.  I grab a taxi to the nearest Royal Jordanian Airline office.  My ticket, an around-the-world deal, is extraordinarily flexible.  When the office opens at 9:00 I’m the first one in.

“Can you get me to Amsterdam today?” I ask the clerk. 

She searches the flight’s database.  “You’re lucky,” she tells me.  “There’s one seat left in your class of ticket.  But the flight leaves in four hours.”

“I’ll take it,” I tell her. She rebooks me and I grab another taxi.  This time I tell him to wait at the hotel while I repack and check out.  Within fifteen minutes we’re on our way to the airport.  I play the Montréal trump card against his twenty questions, but this time there’s no need. He wants to get out of Jordan, emigrate to the USA, does not like living in the tension of the Arab/Palestinian/Jewish/Christian issue. 

Eight hours later I land in Amsterdam.  My dear friends Lomme and Ina do not expect me for another two weeks.  I find a pay phone, and a phone book.  They’re home.

They pick me up and for the next week I use their home as a health sanitorium.  They bring me to their doctor and I’m put on additional meds.  I sleep fifteen hours a day.  It’s there that I recover, but it’s not for another six weeks that I feel fully back to my old self.

I have never forgotten their kindness, and whenever I see them, I remind them once again of the gift they gave me.

I was sick and I was exhausted.  They opened their home and gave me the time and space to recover. And for that I am forever grateful.

People Remembered: Howard Ladue: My Dad's Centennial--Born 100 Years Ago Today

Had my father lived beyond his 82 years, he’d have turned 100 today.  A century!

My Dad’s name was Howard William Ladue and he was born “on the farm,” on the Durand Road in Beekmantown, New York on January 2, 1912.  The “Howard “ in his name comes from some obscure, lost to history, surname on the Ladue side of the family; “William” was his father’s brother’s name.  There had been two brothers—William and Charles--both born in the 1880’s--who’d also been raised in Beekmantown. One brother, William, went off to medical school; Charles, Howard’s father, stayed on the farm.

Charles married a young woman in the farm neighborhood—Maude Boutillier, a.k.a. Butler.  Even today, the Butler Road, which runs perpendicular to the Durand Road, is a 21^st Century reminder of my grandmother’s family who’d settled that road in the mid 1800’s. 

In May of 1910, my grandparents, then in their 20’s and single-handedly working the farm, brought up from New York City a young Willie McGuth.  Willie was a product of the Great Catholic Protectory and had been trained in agrarian skills at the Westchester campus.  Not all boys had stellar experiences on the farms of New York State, but this young man did.  When my dad was born, Willie had been there two years and was, in all aspects, my grandparents’ son.  My father, and then his sister Katherine, born two years later, only knew Willie as their older brother. (Many, many years later, in the young years of the 21^st century, and in the twilight of my aunt’s life, when her mind would slip in and out of dementia, the memory of this fellow was so strong and so positive, that she said to me one day…”I always loved Willie.”  He was, and would always be, their older brother, and the love would flourish for more than ninety years.)

His sister, Catherine, was born in June of 1914 and his second sister, Margaret, was born in March of 1919.  All the children started school at the one room school house in Beekmantown.  They, along with their father and Willie, assisted in farm chores.  But my grandfather, seeing the future, moved them off the farm and into Plattsburgh so all three could have a sturdy Catholic education at St. John’s.

In 1992, just before my Dad’s 80^th birthday, I made a video for him.  “This is your life, Howard Ladue.”  One December’s day, I put Kay in front of the Beekmantown home, still standing and looking good 80 years later, where she narrated their life in that house.  The property extended past Route 11 and beyond the Tastee Freeze.  Route 11 wasn’t there then and the Durand Road was the only north-south passage in that corner of Clinton County that led to Plattsburgh.  They had fields of corn and, according to Kay, who still spoke, for some reason, in that peculiar French-Canadian-English patois, “We malked the cyous,” she happily told me.  Bill Ladue, her first cousin, and oldest son of Dr. William, Kay and Dad’s uncle, was with us, also.  “Tell him how we used to come spend the summers with you.”  Life on the farm stayed with my dad and my aunts, and all their cousins, until the end of their lives.  It was a happy place and an important part of their lives.

My father was fond of children, dogs, cats, michigans and hard candies.  He loved chimpanzees and clowns and shooting pool at the Elk’s Club.  He was what we call a “Regular Joe” and he fit in almost everywhere he went and with whomever he was with. He was easy going and easy to please. He liked just about everyone and everyone liked him. I never heard him say a bad word about anyone.  Never.  Once, I was complaining about someone we both knew.  “Dan,” he said.  “She’s a sick woman.”  And she was.  She had a debilitating muscular disease and was unwell all the time.  I try to remember that about him, and apply it to my life now, these many years later.

He was a great practical joker.  I will never forget Thanksgiving 1979.  The living room was full of company, mostly my friends.  The day before, a woman bearing Steve’s surname, very uncommon in the North Country, then or now, had been implicated in a robbery. 

“Steve, I see where your sister robbed the Grand Union.,” he said. 

Steve, knowing my Dad to be a practical joker, waited.

“She’s my wife,” responded Steve.  There was momentary silence.  My father’s turned to me, staring at me imploringly to get him out of this predicament.   Then all of us who really knew the story, started to laugh, uncontrollably.

My father never played another practical joke on Steve again.

When we were younger, he’d often ski with us. He still wore old, lace up boots that were strapped to dangerously old skis and more-dangerously-still bindings.  (Once, during that time, I was given a similar pair of skis for Christmas.  The following April, I broke my leg at Whiteface.  Two years later, a few days after Christmas, my brother, wearing the same skis, broke his leg.  Shortly before New Year’s Eve that year, he ceremoniously broke up the skis and fed them, sacrificially perhaps, into the fireplace.  From then on we had much safer skis and bindings.

When I was in middle school, and before I imagine, he smoked cigars, (in those days I gave him a box of Swisher Sweets every Christmas, marching myself into a pharmacy and buying them was I was as young as 12 years old) but my allergies to cigar smoke and the cloud it engendered in every room, and the Surgeon General’s exhortation to stop smoking, stopped that habit.

He loved to cane and the chairs he caned (almost all with a story of him and me traveling the summer back roads of Clinton and Essex counties, buying up beat up old wooden chairs, their cane come undone) are still in my home.  He’d buy them for $5.00, take them home, wait until autumn settled in, and happily refinished the chairs then caned them.  I can still see him in the living room, fireplace blazing.  Those chairs filled my parent’s home on Grace Avenue, then at the condo and finally, after my mother moved, at Lake Forest.  If my mother gave one away, it was to someone she loved deeply.  Each of my cousins has one now, and I have the rest.

My Dad loved warm weather.  During World War he chose to enlist in the Army.  He was trained as a radio specialist and was assigned to Honolulu, Hawaii, until 1945.  It forever changed his life.  Now that he’d known another reality, far different from the cold, lifeless winter reality he’d grown up with, he wanted to live in that warmth for the rest of his life.

The War ended, he came home, and married my mother, Rita Boyer, raised in the icy Adirondack town of Saranac Lake, New York. They were married at 8:00 a.m. on September 15, 1945.

My mother had come to Plattsburgh to study business then got a job as the bookkeeper at the new two-story Montgomery Ward on Margaret Street.  My Dad had a light trucking business that he’d purchased from one of his uncles and he would transport goods to the store on a frequent basis.  They became engaged, and then the War broke out.  When he enlisted, she broke off the engagement—not an unwise thing to do.  But sometime in 1945, probably through letters, they were re-engaged and set the date for their wedding.  My Dad looks handsome in his Army uniform and my mother is quite beautiful in a dress she bought in Albany.  He was 33 and she was 29.  After the wedding, they moved to Fort Dix, New Jersey where my Dad finished out his enlistment.

Life moved on after the War.  He finished his gig in the military and he and my mother moved back to Plattsburgh.  They lived on the north side of duplex his parents owned at 144 Oak Street.  He got a job on the Delaware and Hudson Railroad and some of my fondest memories of my dad on the days when I’d go to work with him. Sometime during the day, when the train passed through on its way to Plattsburgh, he’d put in the hands of someone on the train.  I’d ride in cabooses or engines or in coach.  My mother was always waiting for me when the train arrived.  To this day, I will always take a train over any other form of public transportation.

His dad, the grandfather I never knew, died in June of 1947, at 66.  I remember my dad’s 66^th birthday—1978.  I know he was reminiscing when he told me, a bit alarmingly, that he was now the same age his father was when he died.

I was born in March of 1949, when my Dad was 37 and my brother joined us three years later, in June of 1952.  Pictures from that time tell me my father, and mother, loved us.  Whenever he held either of us, it’s always with a smiling face.

But his years in Hawaii instilled within him a yearning for change, and shortly after my brother was born we all moved to Florida.  This was epic—then and in the annals of Ladue family lore and history.  This story has been told elsewhere; suffice to say that we moved back to Plattsburgh in the Fall of 1955.  As far as my mother was concerned, it was a shut book.  But not so for my father.

He returned to his old job—with the Delaware and Hudson Railroad, but he’d lost all his seniority when he left for Florida.  By the late 1950’s, train travel was fading fast.  He and my mother said a Novena to the Sacred Heart.  “It never failed us,” she’d often tell me.  They prayed for direction, and that direction came in the form of the purchase of the only answering service in Plattsburgh.  Plattsburgh Answering Service.  561-0800. The first switchboard, in the summer of 1961, was set up in the kitchen, and as the business grew, my parents built an addition onto their home, and, until they retired, my parents, worked 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

And then life settled into the routine I knew as a child and then a young man.  We skied in the winter and went to the beach and played golf in the summer.  Things my dad liked to do.  He’d bring my brother or I to New York City and we’d spend a weekend at my Aunt Sheila’s in Rego Park.  It was always a thrill to board the train at midnight then sleep in a Pullman Car.  When we arrived at Grand Central Station, we’d cross the street and eat breakfast at Horn and Hardet’s Automat.  Slip in a dime, open the small door, and take out a piece of pie or a sandwich. 

Dad would often get tickets for shows that were still broadcasting out of New York.  I have a very early memory of going to a live radio broadcast and then to a live television broadcast of The Howdy Doody Show.

My brother and I went through the grades at St. Peter’s School, then on to Mount Assumption Institute.  I graduated in 1967 and my brother three years later.

By 1976, when my mom was 60 and my dad was 64, they sold the answering service.  They were free at last to pursue other things.  The following winter they spent several months in Venice, Florida and then, in 1980, they bought a mobile home in Sarasota where they wintered until 1990.

By then the cancer that had taken his kidney in 1984 had metastasized on his lung.  It was time to return to Plattsburgh full time.  I know it must have broken his heart to sell the mobile home at the Buckingham Club and it must have broken his heart even more to return to the chill wind of long winter days.  But I never heard him complain.

On his 80^th birthday, January 2, 1992, video camera rolling, I casually chatted with my Dad about his life.  By then he’d had a stroke, a quadruple by-pass and was battling lung cancer.  “I’ve had a good life,” he told me.

I have thought often of that simple statement these past twenty years.  “I’ve had a good life.”  So simply said, yet so powerful.  Words to live by as I rapidly approach the twilight years I remember my parents living such a short time ago.

My dad died two years, almost to the date, later.  The cancer, which had slowly ebbed the life out of him, finally took its toll.  In December, 1994, I could see him failing.  My mother had asked me to come over one Sunday afternoon to sit with him while so she could go to a Christmas party.  He and I sat at the kitchen table.  As hard as it was, it was time to have a talk.

“It’s ok to go, Dad,” I told him. 

“Do you want me dead?” he asked.

“No, Dad.  Of course not.  But you’re tired and it’s ok to let go.  We’ll all be ok.  I will miss you terribly, but it’s ok to go.”

When my mother got home, I told her what I’d told him, and said that she, too, had to have that conversation, as hard as it might be,

Sometimes I think some people need permission to die.  I have no idea what they talked about.  But two weeks later, on the morning of Christmas Eve, my mother called and asked me if I would come over.  There was a change.  We called hospice.  Later, as twilight settled over Christmas Eve, his nurse calmly, and as empathetically as she could, said…”Your Dad’s going to die.  Not now, not this minute, but changes are occurring that tell us it will be within a few days.”

He lasted through Christmas and left us at 6:35 on the morning of December 26, 1994.   It was a brilliantly blue and sharp and bitterly cold early winter’s day.  I helped the Hospice nurse prepare his body while Mom and Steve stayed downstairs.  “I could never have done that,” said both Steve and my mother.  But to me it was a holy experience, and the last loving act I could do for my father.  It was a privilege.  (Sixteen years later I would pass this privilege on to Vicki, my sister-cousin, when it came time for my mother’s body to be prepared.  Vicki never talked about it, but I know, for her, it was an equally holy experience.)

It’s been seventeen years since my Dad’s been with me, and I miss him still.  I was fortunate, though, to have him for 45 years.  My cousin, in a Christmas letter to me, commented how lucky I was to have had my mother for as long as I did.  “Mine died when I was too young,” she wrote, “and I filled the void with my two aunts.”

And I was lucky.  I knew that then, and I know it now. 

I still miss my Dad, and probably always will, but that is the price all of us pay for loving someone.  His values live on and I often find myself quoting something I learned from him over the years.  (Once, in my twenties, I was complaining about some unexpected bill that had come my way.  I had a secure job, though, and his response is a response I still utter: “Just be grateful you have the money to pay for it.”

The dead do live on in us.  It’s a cliché, but it’s true.  My life is richer for having known Howard William Ladue, and I am grateful to have been his son.

Happy Birthday, Dad!                                                                                                                       Happy 100!                                                                                                                                                

Our Friend Kenia

In 2000, we wanted a new place to vacation during February break.  I was newly home from a year’s leave of absence that gave me the opportunity to travel for an entire school year.  We chose a package out of Montreal that brought us to the Pacific west coast of Mexico, to a place  neither of us had been to—Ixtapa,  We spent the first day in this rather artificial beach town then moved on the Ixtapa’s neighboring city—Zihuatenejo.  Well…we never left.  We’d travel by bus every day to Z’s beaches and only return late at night after gorging ourselves on pozole—a hominy/pork stew famous in the state of Guerrero.

That year we took a tour-a cheesy affair that brought us to a few neighboring villages as well as the stunning, 10 kilometer long stretch of beach known as Playa Larga. We were hooked.

The next year, we simply booked the flight and picked up a hotel in Zihua, and on the first Monday there hired a taxi to bring us to the beach.  When we disembarked, nothing was familiar.  What we soon realized, was that the driver had brought us to the northern end of the beach.  All of this was fine by us, because it was even less developed than the southern side, which we’d been to the winter before.

We explored a bit, then settled into a small restaurant at the junction of the dirt road running along the beach and he asphalt road that we’d taken from the federal highway.  It was then that we me Armando, the young and pleasant owner of the restaurant.  Later in the day we met his wife Kenia, and their young, school age son, Arturo.

That was the beginning of a friendship that spanned eleven years.  In Playa Larga, we’d found our Pacific shangrila, and in Armando and Kenia and their restaurant, Quatro Hermanos, we’d found safe harbor.  We returned several times that week.  We’d start our day there, chatting with either Armando or Kenia, then hike a quarter mile down the beach and spend the day.  By late afternoon we’d be back, drinking beers or sodas and often staying for dinner.

The following year we were back in Zihua.  This had become a wonderful habit and we looked forward to our week on the Pacific—summer in winter.  And each day we’d take a local bus to the road that would bring us to the beach.  We’d walk the three kilometers down a twisty road that brought us past coconut groves and mango orchards.  Always, we’d use Armando and Kenia’s restaurant as our base, and each Thursday we’d be first in line to dine on Kenia’s pozole.

Over the years we met brothers, sisters, parents and friends of the couple and we watched Arturo grow into a teenager.  We felt as if we’d become part of a large, extended family.  And over the years, our contacts in Zihua grew.  We met Mark and Roy from Iowa who introduced us to Fitz and Marge of Maine who introduced us to Linda and Donna of Minneapolis. In August there’d be a Zihua reunion in Maine at Linda’s home on the ocean in Boothbay.

Each February, and sometimes in the summer, we’d return.  Zihua, our days on Playa Larga, and our new friends evolved into a comfortable rut.  Each year Armando and Kenia remembered us.  Of course, we came with a quart of maple syrup.  They, in return, graciously opened their hearts, and their restaurant, to us.  We’d linger on in the evening  to eat pozole or Kenia’s fabulous fresh fish, cooked in local vegetables and served with white rice.  We’d sit in front of the open air restaurant, facing the wild Pacific, always on the lookout for grey whales who swam these waters in the winter.  After the sun set, we’d catch a collectivo back to the main highway and ultimately make it back to our hotel after dark.

We always assume that things are going to go on forever as they always are.

In the late afternoon of December 3, 2011, Kenia left the restaurant.  She was ambushed by four men who demanded the money from the day’s receipts.  When she resisted, they killed her.  Employees who came out when they heard shots, were pistol whipped and told to lie face down on the dirt road.  The men escaped and drove the three miles to the main highway where they picked up another vehicle. 

Kenia, our sweet, kind and friendly friend, left behind Armando, her son Arturo and a host of international visitors who’d spend hours at their friendly beach restaurant.

Sadly, Kenia was one of the hundred on average who will be killed this month in the state of Guerrero Until this, the victims in the violence that has beset Mexico for years, were in the abstract—the countless bodies printed on the front pages of Mexico’s disgusting yellow journalistic press.  But now violence has a face in the name of our friend Kenia. 

It has left all of us reeling, feeling immense sorrow for the loss of her life and the hole it will leave in the lives of her family.  It has also left us afraid.  Afraid to return to Zihua, afraid to walk the lovely three kilometer road from the main highway to Playa Larga, afraid to venture too far away from the beach restaurants.

Senseless.  It’s a word that’s often attached to deaths like this.  You don’t think of it much until it affects you personally.  How much money did these men take off with?  It was a Saturday, in shoulder season.  The restaurant closes early because it’s only open during daylight hours.  Five hundred dollars?  And then divide it four ways.  Five hundred dollars for a life that cannot be replaced?  A life that will be missed for the entire life span of each family member.

Such a senseless act of selfishness.

In the End: Part 4 -- Mexico

Plattsburgh, NY
November 5, 2011

In the end, I could have ended my trip in Miami and been perfectly happy. It was great to see old friends and to be part of the feast day of San Judas and the Day of the Dead, but it was overkill. Too much traveling in too much time. I was tired and Mexico reflected that.

In the end I battled a sinus infection that got so bad I thought I had pneumonia. It's always a challenge to go to the doctor in a foreign country. For most of the time I was tired and it really affected my time in a place I usually like.

In the end, I'll pace myself differently next time.

In the End--the Very End

Plattsburgh, New York
November 7, 2011

In the End. The Very End!

In the end, the very end, I was away from home for a day less than ten weeks—an academic marking period in my old life. What a much more pleasant way of doing time.

In the end, the very end, I touched down in 11 countries, including the USA. Of those eleven, four were new: Iceland, Estonia, Russia and Finland. But to say I’ve “done” those countries—no way. Alighting onto the edge of a country and spending part of day in it is, in my opinion, no way to see a country. More often than not it was frustrating to have such little time.

In the end, the very end, Iceland was the best part of the trip and two weeks there was just not enough time. The country is too rich to see in that short of time and I’m looking forward to a repeat visit with Steve next June when the sun will not set in the north. Repeat visitors have told me that the northeast is just as spectacular at the southern coast. Lots to look forward to.

In the end, the very end, I travelled from just below the Arctic Circle in Iceland at the 66th Parallel to the subtropics of Mexico at the 19th Parallel—a huge distance, and almost all of it on water.

In the end, the very end, I fulfilled a lifetime dream—crossing the Atlantic by sea. Scratch images of the old time steamships. These are luxury liners now and there are endless things to do as the days float by. What a privilege it was to spend six full days, from the Azores to Florida never seeing land, another ship or any sign of civilization.

In the end, the very end, I got to enjoy two and half weeks in Mexico, sharing in the October spirit of the feast day of Saint Jude and Day of the Dead. More and more, Mexico is “home,” and its culture and people are becoming an integral part of my culture.

In the end, the very end, I knew I occupied a space of privilege in the world. I know too well how many people in the world live. What I just finished is something these people could never image. I never want to lose sight of that privilege and I am thankful daily for the gifts that have been given me.

In the end, the very end, it was time to go home. I’d been living in some form of summer for almost nine months and my body and psyche needed an autumn, a slowing down, a tangible turning of season.

In the end, the very end, it was good to be home.

San Judas Tadeo in Mexico City

Mexico City
October 28, 2011

I just love living in Mexico City.

Take today. October 28th. It’s the official feast day of Saint Jude. San Judas Tadeo here in Mexico. Mexicans love their saints and the romerías, or religious fiestas, that go with them.

The listing colonial church called San Hipólito, just behind the main tourist corridor in downtown Mexico City, and not far from where I work, is the absolute epicenter of the San Judas cult that started when a miraculous statue of St. Jude was donated to the church some 30 years ago.

I descend on San Hipólito around noon. Already I’m too late. There is no way I’ll ever break through the crowd of thousands who’ve come here to pray to him. It isn’t just today. They’ll come here every 28th of the month, twelve months a year. But today is different. It’s the official feast day and sixteen Masses will be celebrated in the parish from dawn to evening, and worshippers will crawl to the statue of the saint on their knees, praying for help, protection, and survival. The crowds are so large that police have to cordon off several traffic lanes outside the church.

I’ts a typical late October day—warm and sunny—not a cloud in the sky. There’s an endless parade of statues of St. Jude, some as large as a man can carry, some small but fantastically decorated. Others have built huge St. Jude floats, flowers encircling the statue.

I jostle my way through the crowds. There’s almost nothing I can’t buy—crosses, scapulas, rosaries with St. Jude embossed on them, flowers, Halloween pumpkins, tee-shirts with San Judas designs. Indeed, many of the young man and women are wearing them, along with tattoos of the saint on their cheeks or upper arms. I consider having a temporary tattoo for five pesos, but think better of it. Groups push their way through the crowd, but there comes a point where the wall is impenetrable. I just settle in where I am, knowing I’m not going to get any closer.

There are true worshippers here, but to me the scene is more party than piety. The truly pious are here to give thanks for miracles performed and to pray to the saint. At some point in the Mass, the priest blesses the statues. Thousands of people lift their San Judas. It’s quite impressive, but I’ve been spending too much time with the Quakers lately, and this form of religiosity is totally unappealing to me. But still I come and love every one of these extravaganzas that Mexico City does so well.

I grew up knowing that Saint Jude was the patron saint of desperate cases and lost causes. In the USA it seems to be a respectable cult, but here it’s dubious. Historians have noted that the cult to St. Jude, popular with Columbians, coincides with the beginnings of the narco-trade between Columbia and Mexico. In fact, so many criminals pray to St. Jude that the Archdiocese of Mexico issued a statement in November 2008 clarifying that St. Jude Thaddeus is not the “patron saint” of criminals or drug lords.
I suppose it makes sense. There’s too much struggle here. People don’t earn enough money and work extraordinarily long hours on their job. It’s a tough life in a tough city. If San Judas offers help, I say go for it.

I finally leave, hot and sweaty from being jostled around for several hours. I’ve taken a ton of pictures. The photo-ops were just too good to pass up. But all day long I encounter the feast day. Processions walk down different streets all heading towards San Hipólito. I ride the Metro Bus to La Roma and people are carrying their statues home. It’s the same heading back to Coyoacán that evening. The Metro is full of devotees.

Long after night has settled on the city, firecrackers continue to be set off. They’ve been firing away since midnight and won’t end ‘til the day is over.

What a city! The day certainly hasn’t made me more religious, but it did put another notch on the many reasons I love this city.

San Hippolito is the absolute epi-center of the St, Jude cult in Mexico.

Hundreds of thouseands come on October 28th to show their respect and to ask for favors.

Sixteen masses were said from dawn to sundown. At each Mass, the priests blessed the statues.

How cool can I be?

Devotion show no age, but it does tend to be young males.

Vendors sell everything.

Pilgrims carry statues and pictures.

Time to chill

And other stuff...

Boys and girls wear tattoos of Saint Jude on their faces and arms