The Long Loneliness of Compadre Papito, el amigo de siempre

21 September 2020

 

The Long Loneliness of Compadre Papito, el amigo de siempre

 

Papito, my dear friend and compadre of many years, has fallen ill. This fall has been both dramatic and confusing: in the past two weeks he’s gone from more or less his normal routine (as much as this is possible, during a pandemic, in a community as dense and boisterous as Batey Libertad,), to being unable to walk without serious distress, or talk without slurring, and or even conduct a short conversation coherently. It’s not entirely clear yet what’s going on— not to the doctors who’ve seen him in Esperanza, not to my doctor friends in the US to whom I’ve forwarded the various scans, reports, and prescriptions he invariably photographs and sends me via whatsapp, not even to his family members, who include one daughter who is a doctor and another who is studying to be a nurse, and least of all to me, with no medical training whatsoever, only more experiences than I wish to remember accompanying loved ones through serious illness.

         Many hypotheses have emerged, and several still float around like buoys in the water: stroke, Parkinson’s, early dementia, hypothyroidism, and various pulmonary complications. He’s lived a hard, hard life, and has struggled to take care of himself, despite his unwavering commitment to take care of others. And that’s never been more apparent than now, both in how his system has seemingly collapsed all at once, like a dam’s sudden surrender to a river, and in his refusal, at first, to allow any family members to help manage his situation, make plans with the doctors, or even question what meds he was taking. He is only 61, but the life he’s lived, in the place he’s lived it, would have killed a lesser man years ago. And too often, it has.

         The first signs of a change in Papito, to me, started to emerge back in the winter, though in fact, and not surprisingly, it seems that his family had begun to notice them before then. In our regular phone calls, which occur sometimes weekly, sometimes daily, depending on the state of the community, he would occasionally drift into unrelated topics, or get quickly upset, or hang up without truly signing off. (In a culture that highly values greetings and good-byes, this last is unusual for someone so gifted in interpersonal relations). But these I attributed to the stress I knew he was bearing, accompanying his wife through her myriad tests and treatments for hypothyroidism and a cancerous tumor (benign, but still needing excision). I knew he felt, at least for a time, that his wife might not survive (and unfortunately I also know what’s that’s like), so I chalked it all up to this, and gave him a pass.

         But a phone call in early March jolted me out of that complacency. Paul Burson, my mentor and friend for even longer than Papito— the man who first brought me to the Dominican Republic, and introduced me to Papito— had just returned from leading a group of Regis University students on pilgrimage in the D.R.; they returned to the U.S. just before the WHO declared a pandemic, and both countries went into lock-down. Pablo called and said he had to tell me about Papito, and I could hear it in his voice: shock not only about the weight loss, but the trembling hands, and the trouble focusing. He suspected Parkinson’s.

         Hearing that, I felt the wind knocked out of my gut. How could this happen— again? For several years, another dear friend in the D.R. — truly one of the most brilliant people I know, a teacher, journalist, and community leader whose example, mentoring, and friendship have helped shape who I am today— was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, and since then, his struggles to speak, walk, and engage life as he once did have seemed more heartbreaking than hopeful. Though Papito is not as learned, he is equally brilliant, in the ways he has organized, led, and reconciled his incredibly complex and stubbornly divided community of Batey Libertad— where he was born and raised, and has raised his ten children and some grandchildren to boot— and helped lead Education Across Borders, the organization he and I co-founded with another Dominican.

         When I asked Papito directly about his health, relaying Pablo’s observations and deep concern, he pirouetted, saying that yes, he had lost a little weight, but that generally he was feeling fine, his normal self. And what about your hands, I asked. Ay Juan, es sólo la viejez— that’s just age. And his quick temper recently?  No, I haven’t been mad, he said, that’s just the way I talk sometimes. You know me, I’m passionate.

         What could I do? This man was my elder, and one of my best friends, someone I’ve trusted with my life. Much as I would have wanted to, I wasn’t about to push him hard on this, and begin to badger him like the persistent widow Jesus teaches about. At this distance from the D.R., and now even more so with international travel suspended, my sole connection with Papito for God only knew how long would be these phone calls. If he were to feel judged, or no longer trusted, he could very easily just stop taking my calls, and chalk it up— as would be quite plausible, actually— to poor technology in the D.R., overloaded phone and internet lines in this new age of the COVID-19 pandemic. I didn’t want to risk it, not at this moment.

         Three weeks ago, things shifted again, even more dramatically. As I often do, I recorded and sent a series of voice messages to the group of Dominican leaders and staff; since the six of us are spread out across different regions of both the D.R. and U.S., and video calls are beyond our technological reach right now, and neither Papito nor Fella use email, we’ve improvised this method as a way to keep in touch and keep the organization moving forward on matters that require everyone’s input. On this occasion, I was putting back on the table the long-lingering topic of legalizing Education Across Borders in the D.R. (Currently it only has that status in the U.S.). In this time of great uncertainty, it seemed to me an avenue to greater funding possibilities, among other benefits, as well as an important step to preserving the legacy of the work Papito and Fella have done in their communities, and continuing to extend it to others. Papito responded first, with an explosion: he accused me of essentially selling him out, shopping EAB around as if it could be sold to a larger and more established NGO like Catholic Relief Services. I am not going with that plan, he yelled into his recorded response, I won’t be subject to some other organization or anyone who won’t recognize all the years I’ve been working for my community. If you want to go form your own organization, go do it.

         There’s a line in one of Raymond Carver’s stories in which a character, on the phone with someone he’s known for decades, is struck dumb by something they say, and simply pulls the phone away from his ear and looks at it. That was my reaction, listening to this message. Who is this, I thought. I don’t know this person; this is not Papito.

         I did not call him back right away, but instead called Fella, our other co-founder who’s known Papito for as long as I have, and Yanlico, his mentee, now living in Washington, D.C. with his wife but with one foot still in the D.R. (like many recent immigrants), who has known him even longer. Over the next 24 hours, we traded observations and reflections, and started to build the picture, which became darker as we went— more complex, and less complete. I wanted to talk with his wife, my comadre Nanota, but my Kreyol is not up to the task, and though her Spanish is better, it is still only passable, and that felt too risky right now. Yanlico served as intermediary with her, and also took it upon himself to initiate contact with Papito’s three sons living in the U.S., as well as his children living in the D.R., including some still in the same home. Again, the picture enlarged, becoming clearer in places, murkier in others. Lots of weight loss, quicker temper, more restless and distracted, especially in conversation, and always— always— insisting that he go to the doctor alone, when he did in fact go, or if accompanied, that he control who talked to the doctor, and that he procured and took his medications by himself, without anyone’s help, thank you very much.

         The days following seemed to stretch out, and grind along, as I strung together phone calls, and tried to keep my son engaged in something other than youtube or video games during his last week of summer, a taller order this summer than in past. Some days, Papito would call and be completely incoherent, speaking very slowly, with great effort and little clarity; the junior staff member reported that occasionally Papito did not even recognize him, or remember his name, and family members said he would ramble on nearly nonstop; other days, his family would report he was un poquito mucho mejor— literally, “a little bit much better” (perhaps one of my favorite Dominicanisms), but then the next day, he’d be a Dali-esque version of himself again, distorted almost beyond recognition.

         What I experienced emotionally seemed to forecast how I would soon feel physically, in the second week of September, when the western wildfires’ smoke settled into Washington state and simply would not budge: stagnation, lethargy, anxiety when breathing, nausea when doing even the simplest tasks, and hoping hour by hour from a place of utter powerlessness, please God let this pass, and soon. Please, soon.

         This was my first personal experience with what I’d been reading about in the papers for months— longing to be with a loved one who is very ill, yet feeling paralyzed by the pandemic. Yes, I could have, technically, dropped everything and gone, since the D.R. is a country that will actually accept U.S. visitors right now. I could have told my wife that this was an emergency and she’d just have to do the best she could, managing our family while slogging through the Seattle Public School system’s sorry excuse for teacher training that they were cramming down the teachers’ throats, Zoom-zhaustion style, the week before the first day of the virtual school year; I could have risked spreading or catching infection, and just gone with that feeling I had that I just need to be there, no matter what, the same feeling that Papito’s sons in the US were sitting with.

But then, my doubts trickled in, and gained momentum. What could I really do there, after all, beyond what his wonderful family was already doing: sit with him, go to the doctors with him, and feel just as helpless, or even more so, than I do now? And how could my conscience bear the thought that I might carry an infection to him, knowing his long history of smoking and his on-going pulmonary complications even several years now after he’d quit? Or that I might infect someone else in that dense, humid, boisterous community where COVID has only (miraculously) infected twenty people, and killed one, where social distancing is a denial of plain reality, where soldiers come to enforce the curfew nightly and tell people, with a straight face, get back in your home, even if that home is a ten by ten box of tin sheets that has sucked up the day’s Caribbean sun and releases it all night long? Though I’ve worked for more than twenty years on building a ministry that prioritizes relationship over results, presence over projects, and simple faithfulness over “success,” I was questioning that, day and night, during those smoke-filled weeks, when Seattle’s air bordered on toxic, and so far I’ve decided to stay home.

         Papito’s sons have made a different choice, despite the pleadings of my wife and I. She worked in immigration law in her mid-twenties, and has kept tabs on it, especially since 2017, when the megalomaniac-in-chief DdT started messing around with it as a way to boost ratings among his devotees. Don’t go, we both counseled, having heard stories recently of people who, despite having a green card, have not been admitted back in the U.S. after visiting family abroad. But that advice fell on deaf ears, and perhaps for the better, for who am I to tell them how to live, where to go or not go, when their father is in a state like this.

         After all, I realize now that some part of my objection was not based in concern for them, but rather in my own, unexamined, loneliness. Ever since I’ve been unable to visit and work in the D.R. regularly as I did for fifteen years, I’ve longed for it in various ways. I’ve also come into a deepening acceptance of this distance, and celebrated the fruits it has generated, primarily my family’s more stabilized health but also the broadening and strengthening of EAB’s leadership, especially in the D.R., which I was able to experience quite powerfully during my short visits in 2017 and 2018. I was looking forward to the possibility of going again this summer, for a longer stay to launch a new project, before the pandemic took over our lives, and so at times these past months I’ve found myself visited by unbidden memories, many even sensorial though without a clear stimulus, that have given me both a breath of joy and an ache of melancholy: the way the campo pines and palms fade from green to black against the twilight sky; the fierce, thick midday heat of siesta, and the strange pleasure of polishing off a big, steaming plate of beans and rice despite it all; the smell of carbón wood smoke from a fogón’s clay stove; the early morning quiet, especially in Papito’s home, of a community just waking, with women and men singing songs of mourning as they begin another day of washing clothes or slogging through the rice fields, with a child wandering about looking for a stray bottle cap or branch to play with, with an egret gliding silently above in the brightening blue sky.

         Papito’s sons have only wanted to tend to their own feelings of loneliness, and Papito’s too, just as I have. So, risky though it is, the fact that they can do that is something to be celebrated.

         As is what their presence represents. This moment has brought forth something wonderful, despite the deepening pain and uncertainty. I have been talking with Papito as frequently as I can, often daily; regardless of his coherence I try to encourage him, telling him that he is now reaping the benefits, in his own flesh and blood, of what he has worked for all these long, lonely years. The body of people working together to support him—his family, his community members, and many friends here in the U.S— is a fulfillment of what he told me when we first met in 1997: that the people in his community needed to live like human beings. And human beings, as Mother Teresa taught us, are most human when we think and act as if we actually belong to each other, as if we are parts of One Body, as St Paul so beautifully wrote.

         I would dearly like to be part of this Body in a different way, there on the ground, in his home, seeing his face. But I am humbled, and deeply proud, when I consider who is there, and how much more important that is. The adult children who are taking him to the doctors, who are sending me the scans and test results and prescriptions, are all college educated, and one is a doctor; they can help Papito navigate the complexities of his situation, and advocate with the care providers, much more skillfully than he could on his own, and certainly much more fruitfully than he would have been able to twenty-five (or even five) years ago. The junior staff member who has now temporarily assumed Papito’s duties is also a college graduate, a gifted teacher, and an emerging leader, who will keep EAB’s work going; years ago, had Papito fallen ill like this, our organization would have been hanging by a thread. All of these young adults, and many, many more, have been educated, and their families housed with dignity, thanks to Papito’s work in building Education Across Borders, and even more deeply than that, in living as a true human being. And devoting his life to the long, lonely work of helping others do the same.

         In the “Postscript” of The Long Loneliness, her autobiography, Dorothy Day writes, “The final word is love. At times it has been, in the words of Father Zossima, a harsh and dreadful thing, and our very faith in love has been tried through fire.”

         In the D.R., my writings, and my life as a writer, mean little to many people I know, most of whom are too overwhelmed with surviving to think much about literature, and some of whom were never given the chance to learn to read. Papito’s formal education does not extend nearly as far as his natural intelligence would have merited; we’ll never have the kind of friendship in which we sit up talking about Tolstoy and Garcia-Márquez, but at times he articulates his wisdom as if he too were a writer. A few years ago, when someone asked him to describe how he and I have worked together to help his community, he didn’t offer a resume-type answer of statistics, achievements, or awards. He smiled and said, El es nuestro amigo de siempre.  He’s our forever friend.

         I’ve rarely treasured a compliment so much.

         Day continues:  “We cannot love God unless we love each other. We know him in the breaking of bread, and we know each other in the breaking of bread, and we are not alone anymore. Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet, too, even with a crust, where there is companionship.”

         Much more than I, Papito has been el amigo de siempre. He has sought out so many lost sheep, nursed so many parts of the Body back to health, and worked tirelessly, often anonymously, to help others see how important, vital, they are, lost or sick as they might be in that moment. I pray daily for his healing, and in the meantime, I’m consoled knowing that his children and his friends everywhere are faithfully taking up his mission.

         Day ends her autobiography with: “We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.”

         Papito’s spiritual community— which now extends far beyond Batey Libertad, in the hearts of thousands of people he has touched over the years— is wounded now, feeling vulnerable. But we are strong, hopeful, and healing… by little and by little.

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