Archive for March 2nd, 2010
Giving It Up
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010
– for Maxie
Maxie couldn’t have been happier
than he was the day our sister got married.
I picked him up at the hospital
as I usually did most Saturday mornings,
then headed directly for my apartment
where his new outfit awaited him:
brown wool suit, white shirt, rakish red
tie and matching pocket hanky,
sleek brown loafers with tassels –
even new socks and underwear.
He looked spectacular when finished,
even more handsome than sister Eileen’s
husband-to-be, who was plagued
by the jitters, as was fretful Eileen,
whose chief concern was Maxie.
I made sure Maxie swallowed two
Ritalin tablets, then my wife gave him
a final once over before we left
for the groom’s parents’ church.
Maxie circulated with snacks at the reception,
danced with every willing female,
and charmed everyone who noticed him –
many didn’t, because he fit right in,
regardless of the demons he suppressed.
His smiling mug showed up in many
of the wedding pictures, testaments
to his having enjoyed a wonderful day.
I picked him up again a week later,
expecting him to be wearing his new duds
but found him instead deep in thought
in his usual uniform, scruffy cottons.
Maxie said one of the other patients
had a sister who was getting married,
so he’d given away the suit and accessories.
I silently cursed his misguided generosity, but
finally gave it up when I saw how
genuinely pleased with himself he seemed.
Note: Golly, Miss Molly, another too-true story. Maxie, movie-star handsome, came down with the too frequent affliction of young men in those days, paranoid schizophrenia. After nearly ten years in a mental hospital, the infamous St. Elizabeth’s in Washington, D.C., he began coming out of his long funk of non-communication after starting on what would later become known as the miracle drug Ritalin. Returning home most weekends, he came back to family but was, of course, never quite the same. This incident of dear sister Eileen’s wedding had to be one of the highlights of his tormented life – a day of great merriment for him and for us, his family. Alas, his dosage of Ritalin was said to be a hundred times what today is normally prescribed for patients and, after too few years, killed him. We had him back for too short a while. Good to remember a happy day, Eileen and Dave having recently celebrated fifty years of married life together.
(Published in Into the Teeth of the Wind, Vol. II, Issue 2-3, 2001)
