Memorial Day Weekend

There's not a lot to say about how I found Suerk Memorial Day weekend. Physically, he's almost the same as he was the last time I saw him. The difference is, he's less mobile than he was. He was hardly mobile last time I saw him, but now less so. Before, he was turning his head more, shrugging his shoulders. His arms moved more. His hands and fingers looked swolen, but normal. Now his neck is stiff. He turns his eyes, but not his head. His hands and arms are stiffly curled up under the covers. No more motion there. He refuses all opportunities to move. By that I mean he does not participate in physical therapy -- mostly stretching. He will not leave the bed. The nurses plead with him, informing him regularly, "We are 'designed' to be upright," and that, "For two hours a day, at least, you need to be sitting in a chair." Nothing doing! I have asked him how I should explain to friends that he has 'taken to the bed,' not engaging outside his 100 square feet of space. He says, "Tell them I love the bed." When I say, "I cannot do that because I know it's not true," he says, "Let's not go there now." So there it is.

As ever, mentally, he's still 'all there.' There were some things he asked me to bring, and he wanted to get down to business before I could pull up a chair. First, he'd been exasperated because he thought there was one cast member from Godspell whom he could not remember. This is something he'd been wrestling with for more than a week before my visit. With the help of Susan Simar and Shirley Zeger, I presented him the program from 1978. He scanned it quickly, realizing he'd only imagined the missing cast member. His mental list was totally complete. And when his eyes reached the names and photos of John Swing and Kitty Whitty on the program, he wept openly, reading their names aloud, tears freely streaming.

Then he wanted me to hold up the lyrics from Jerome Kern's, "Roberta's," "Let's Begin." So I pulled that out of my bookbag as directed. He worked through those lyrics with a kind of vengeance, pounding them out like he would do during Octet rehearsals, with an exaggerated emphasis on the rhythm. He explained why he'd asked me to bring those lyrics with me. As a young kid, he went with his parents to State College to visit brother Chuck and to attend a play. During intermission, when everyone else walked, milled and conversed, he sat alone, mesmerized while the band played "Let's Begin." It was the first time he'd heard that kind of rhythm played, and with a symbol. What had caused his intense desire to hear the piece was a 'missing beat' on the little, battery powered clock on the wall at the foot of his bed. The rhythm of the clock evoked that memory from his childhood. He hears the song as the clock beats, but didn't have the proper lyrics to go with it. Mission accomplished.

Finally, within the first minutes of the visit, he asked me to produce a copy of the letter that Mike Stanford had written him. After seeing it in print for the first time (I'd read it to him more than once), he asked that I tack it to his corkboard, facing the wall. He did not want to flaunt the letter to everyone who walked in the room, but he wanted it there, to know that it was there, and perhaps to show it to someone special should the opportunity present itself.

More on my visit later, along with a copy of Mike Stanford's letter.