Have a Little Faith - Mitch Albom [47]
DECEMBER
Good and Evil
After all his years of dogged survival, the Reb, I believed, could beat back any illness; he just might not beat them all.
The attack that had left him slumped in a chair, confused and mumbling, proved not to be a stroke at all, but rather a tragic consequence of his multiple afflictions. In the stir of doctors and prescriptions, the Reb’s Dilantin medication—taken, ironically, to control seizures—had been inadvertently increased to levels that pummeled him. Toxic levels.
Simply put, pills had turned the Reb into a human scarecrow.
When the problem was finally discovered—after several terrible months—dosages were quickly adjusted, and he was, in a matter of days, brought out of his crippling stupor.
I first heard about this in a phone call with Gilah and a subsequent one with Sarah.
“It’s amazing…,” they said. “It’s remarkable…”
There was a buoyancy in their voices I hadn’t heard in months, as if an unexpected summer had arrived in their backyard. And when I caught a plane to the East Coast and entered the house myself, and got my first glimpse of the Reb in his office—well, I wish I could describe the feeling. I have read stories about coma patients who suddenly, after years, awaken and ask for a piece of chocolate cake, while loved ones stare in dropped-jaw disbelief. Maybe it was like that.
All I know is that he turned in his chair, wearing one of those vests with all the pockets, and he held out his bony arms, and he smiled in that excited, crinkle-eyed way that seemed to emit sunlight, and he crowed, “Hellooo, stranger”—and I honestly thought I had seen someone return from the dead.
What was it like? I asked him, when we’d had a chance to settle.
“A fog,” he said. “Like a dark hole. I was here, but somehow I wasn’t here.”
Did you think it was…you know…
“The end?”
Yeah.
“At times.”
And what were you thinking at those times?
“I was thinking mostly about my family. I wanted to calm them. But I felt helpless to do so.”
You scared the heck out of me—us, I said.
“I am sorry about that.”
No. I mean. It’s not your fault.
“Mitch, I have been asking myself why this happened,” he said, rubbing his chin. “Why I have been…spared, so to speak. After all, another couple of whatchamacallits…”
Milligrams?
“That’s it. And I could’ve been kaput.”
Aren’t you furious?
He shrugged. “Look. I’m not happy, if that’s what you’re asking. But I must believe the doctors were doing their best.”
I couldn’t believe his tolerance. Most people would have been at a lawyer’s office. I guess the Reb felt if there was a reason for his rescue, it wasn’t to file lawsuits.
“Maybe I have a little more to give,” he said.
Or get.
“When you give, you get,” he said.
I walked right into that one.
Now, I knew the Reb believed that corny line. He truly was happiest when he could help someone. But I assumed a Man of God had no choice. His religion obliged him toward what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.”
On the other hand, Napoleon once dismissed religion as “what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.” Meaning, without the fear of God—or literally the hell we might have to pay—the rest of us would just take what we wanted.
The news headlines certainly endorsed that idea. In recent months, there had been terrorist train blasts in India, greedy executives sentenced in the Enron fraud case, a truck driver who’d shot five girls in an Amish schoolhouse, and a California congressman sent to jail for taking millions in bribes while living on a yacht.
Do you think it’s true, I asked the Reb that day, that our nature is evil?
“No,” he said. “I believe there is goodness in man.”
So we do have better angels?
“Deep down, yes.”
Then why do we do so many bad things?
He sighed. “Because one thing God gave us—and I’m afraid it’s at times a little too much—is free will. Freedom to choose. I believe he gave us everything needed to build a beautiful world, if we choose wisely.
“But we can also choose badly. And we can mess things up something awful.”
Can man change