33 Years Ago - A Reflection
...we look to the stories of our origins to make sense of things, to remember who we are. The role of origin stories...is to enlighten the present by recalling the past. Origin stories are rarely straightforward history. Over the years, they morph into a colorful amalgam of truth and myth, nostalgia and cautionary tale, the shades of their significance brought out by the particular light of a particular moment.
Rachel Held Evans -- Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again
November 1987
I didn’t expect to wind up on an Amtrak train to New York, a week after the due date for our second child, but before child number two decided to make his formal appearance. But I also had not expected to get one of those phone calls. The late at night -- uh-oh, why is the phone ringing?-- phone calls.
“I’m afraid I have bad news. Your father went into the city as usual this morning, and then just didn’t come home. It took a while to track him down -- I called some of his work people, and the police in New York, and nothing. You know how he’s usually reliable as clockwork. I finally called the local police and they eventually tracked him down.”
Uh-huh, my head nodding, a sense of dread rising by the second.
“He apparently had a heart attack on the way to his first appointment, and he got separated from his wallet, which is why it took so long to track him down. He’s alive, but in a coma at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan.”
“OK. I’ll be there tomorrow.” And so, I found myself on the Amtrak, heading up and back on the same day, one foot headed to New York to be with my father in a coma, and the other foot still firmly rooted in Herndon and waiting for labor to begin.
Bellevue was... well it was pretty chaotic for a suburban kid. In a bit of fog, I stared at the mission statement on the message board at the main entrance: “Bellevue is America’s oldest operating hospital, established in 1736… Our mission is to provide the highest quality of care to New York's population and to deliver health care to every patient with dignity, cultural sensitivity and compassion, regardless of ability to pay.”
All the way up on the train, the name “Bellevue” kept picking at my consciousness. Why was this name so familiar? I had never been there, and yet some sort of familiarity kept pushing through. As I stared at the inspiring mission statement -- and the fact that this place has been here for 250 years -- it came to me. “Bellevue.” Growing up in the shadow of New York, I couldn’t believe it had taken me the entire train ride -- plus the chaos in the lobby -- to remember.
“Bellevue” was where the crazy people were.
Though Bellevue is now a full-service hospital, it was once popularly associated with the treatment of mentally ill patients who required psychiatric commitment. The name "Bellevue" was shorthand in the New York area -- even across the country -- for “lunatic asylum.”
This was the place where author Norman Mailer was taken after he stabbed his wife. The place where Mark David Chapman was brought after he shot John Lennon. The place mentioned by name by the Allen Ginzberg in “Howl” and where he was a patient. High school English came in handy for something after all.
This was also the place that was a frequent source of quasi threats from my parents over the years. As in, “Keep it up kids, and we’ll all wind up in Bellevue.”
Be careful what you wish for. Looks like we’re all here now.
By the time I arrived from DC, things had gone downhill with my father. He was still in a coma. The doctors told my mother that “things didn’t look good; there doesn’t seem to be evidence of brain activity.” My father would have had a field day with that after all of the jokes he had made over the years about leaving his brain at the office.
He looked peaceful. Frankly, he looked good. He looked like he was planning the most incredible practical joke ever. “I TOLD you we would all wind up in Bellevue!”
But I knew just looking at him that this was not going to end well.
So many things ran through my head. Just two months earlier -- our last out of town trip before the “no more trips” part of pregnancy -- we had been home. We were all standing on the back deck, and my father was bouncing up and down, up and down, on a portable trampoline. My mother’s words echo in my mind and seemingly around the metal and ceramic of the hospital room, “Joe, be careful. You’ll have a heart attack.” Sigh.
While I went through the motions of pleading with God for a miracle, to grant this funny and quirky man a sudden last-minute reprieve from the governor, I think in my heart of hearts I knew it was not to be. I thanked him for being a great father. I uttered a few curses that it should all come to this end at age 62. I hope he heard me. I kept waiting for some unexpected twitch or eyeblink to signify that he knew I was there, but it was not to be.
As I left the room, looking back at him just lying there under a sheet, I knew that I would not see him again. That he would never meet his new grandchild. That I would never get to ask him all of the things that I should have asked him while I had the chance, but never did, knowing that time would extend out forever. Or at least for a while longer. Except that it didn’t.
After a few hours, I left Bellevue, hoping to never hear of this place again, and headed back to DC.
A few days later, my son William was born. And the day after that, my father died.
On the death certificate, under parents, it lists “Frank and Elizabeth Mancini.”
So many questions.
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