Consideration Corner Forum Writing topic for the week of ..

 The obstacle in my life I had to overcome was fear. I had good parents who taught me lessons in courage.

        Courage. I thought I knew all about it. From those early comic-book years, my heroes were the one-dimensional characters who could fly, stop trains with their bare hands, shout magical words that transformed them into mighty warriors who defeated evil forces everywhere. I collected their ten-cent comic-book life stories and saved them for years. I wanted to be brave like them. Save families in burning buildings. Apprehend those predators of the innocent and send them to prison for life.

        Isn't it true that in our need to understand life, we try so hard to look beyond, somewhere out there, for answers, only to discover, hopefully, those answers were always in plain sight, if only we would have taken the time to look around?

        My nose in the comic books, I did not realize in those Brooklyn days of my youth that I had pegged it all wrong. The true hero lived in the same cold-water flat in Brooklyn, New York, as I did. He went to work each night at the Italian bakery where he worked hard for little pay. He was the man who once turned to me and my siblings and said, "Do you know why I would give my right arm for your mother?" And when we could think of no reply, he answered his own question: "Because this wonderful woman for me would give both her arms!"

        He was my father, who knew when to be stern, when to make us laugh, when to tell us his parables to explain life's problems so well. But I never recognized the man as my hero. Oh, not because he could not fly. Not because he was a short man no taller than 5' 5" who weighed little and did not bulge with Charles-Atlas biceps. He was my father; I loved him as I loved my mother, but somehow I never thought of him in terms of courage. I never noticed the little things he did that made life less frightening for us.

        I remember an Easter time when I was about four. I was lying in my bed screaming in the middle of the night.

        "What's wrong?" my father asked, his dark brown eyes big with worry. "What happened? Just a bad dream?" he asked.

        I was pointing at the top of the dresser, the object of my outburst. "Look!" I said, still crying. "Over there!" To my young boy's eyes a monster sat in my bedroom atop the dresser, just waiting for the precise moment to pounce on my back, bite me till I bled.

        Then Papa clicked on the light, walked to the dresser, turned to me, and said, "No monster here. Just the dark. Something you thought you saw." He carried the object towards me; it was a chocolate Easter bunny, part of its ear missing, its chocolate-chip beady eyes staring at me. Papa laughed now and hugged me. "Can I put the bunny back on the dresser?" he asked. I nodded. "Never be afraid of anything," he said. In this life most everything we cry about are like scary-looking bunnies in the dark."

        Years flew by. In college I acquired more book heroes, men and women of courage who had made a difference. Still, Papa was just Papa doing what he always did best, being a good father, a good husband to my mother, a good grandfather, a good neighbor, as well as a good friend to me. But I was still wearing blinders that prevented me from seeing the heroic man he had always been in his quiet way. He was not bigger than life.

        When I spoke of injustice in the world, "What goes around, comes around," was his stock reply. "God takes care of everything." No, not a hero. Just my father. To me courage seemed to be the trait of giants with overwhelming presence. They demonstrated absolutely no fear.

        When the doctors diagnosed my father as having advanced lung cancer in 1987, I found it hard to believe. Here was a man who never before spent a moment in a hospital except to visit others. He never complained of a headache, never broke a bone, never had the flu. Didn't I see back then my father was at least as healthy as those comic-book heroes? So when the doctors explained that he would not live very long, I panicked. He was always there for me. Now this strong man had been toppled by cancer. I prayed and prayed God would not take him. I prayed for courage. I asked God to make me brave because I wasn't the hero type. I never had anything so threateningly monumental in my life to which I had to stand tall and brave. Until now.

        Life is strange. We live each day so sure of ourselves. We know the steps we take will get us to our destinations. We see others confronting tragedy and we play-act our sympathy because we cannot experience our empathy. Then one day, at least for me, an epiphany stopped me short like a knock on the head. Without words, just a feeling inside me, a kind of wave passed over me. Courage. Somehow a lesson would finally be learned. Here. In St. Mary's Hospital where my father lay dying.
                                ***

        I walk into his hospital room, a smile painted on my face seconds before entering. He says, "Oh, Sal!" as if he is the happiest person in the hospital today because I am here now with him. "Hi, Pa," I say, like the millions of "Hi Pa's" throughout my life, a simple greeting of son to father.

        "They want me to walk a little down the corridor," he says. "Guess that means I'm gonna live!" Then he winks, laughs with effort, coughs horribly for too long a moment as I help him down from the bed, into his slippers. I tell him I'll wheel his I-V stand, which he calls "my friend." And the two of us, very very slowly walk down the hospital corridor on the fifth floor of St. Mary's.

        We don't say anything for awhile. I push the I-V, careful not to entangle the wire around my ankles or my father's, my other hand at his arm so I can catch him if he falls. Finally he stops to catch his breath. I wait. "Should we find a place to sit, Pa?" He shakes his head no, coughs to clear his throat. I could feel the cough racking tremors into him. He looks so frail. He detects the sadness in the turning down of my lips.

        "You want to ask me something, right?" he says to me. "Go ahead and ask."

        I shrug my shoulders. What is he talking about! I have no questions for him, only for myself when he is gone.

        "Ask me."

        I'm at a loss for words. Am I to make something up now so he'll be happy? Then he asks, "Was I ever afraid in this life of ours?"

        What does he mean? I wonder. "No, Pa, I don't think you ever were."

        "Now I'm coming to the end, you might say, you're curious about something. I know it." He waited, perhaps thinking I'd confess, he'd respond, and we could close the issue right then and there. But I don't have anything in mind. At least it isn't obvious to me at that moment.

        But then as he speaks the words, I can feel myself being somehow lifted off the ground. An epiphany all at once accompanying my father's words. "Sal, you want to know if I am afraid to die. If I have what's needed to pass away from here. Courage?"

        Now I am nodding my head at the uncanniness of it all. How did he know it was my question perhaps all my life in my search for heroes and the true meaning of courage when I didn't know enough myself to ask it! This was the most important day of my life.

        "Pa," I began, but the words choked in the vise of my throat. So he raised his arm and smiled when the I-V stand nearly fell over. "Sorry, my friend," he said to the I-V stand, then to me, "I have the courage. I am not afraid to die, just as I was never afraid to live. Don't worry anymore about me, all right?" he said and placed his free arm around my shoulders. I nodded, tried hard not to let myself cry. "We all have to make that trip, Sal. Maybe I could wait a few years but it's not up to me. We have the faith. We know where we're going. What goes around, comes around. Where God is, that's where courage is rewarded."

        Papa died a week later. His courage has sustained me all these years, and my own courage, by example, is a lesson I hope to impart to others.

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