I am one of seven children. Both of my parents are still living. They have two boys, and they had five daughters. The eldest of the clan, named Amy Ironside, left us in July of 2015. It was a startling thing for everyone. We each reacted differently, as do many people in the wake of a death out of sequence. No one is supposed to predecease one’s parents. Amy’s departure disrupted the natural order of things. Some of us clung together with ferocity, others pulled away. Two months after Amy’s passing, I went on a trip to Portugal. I was numb to what had occurred within my family and tried with all my might to push it out of my mind. On the beginning of this trip to the Iberian Peninsula, I was blind to the rugged beauty of a fishing town along the Atlantic. There just so happened to be a local feast in this village. These elaborate celebrations are meant to honor the local patron saint of each town. This particular feast celebrated Our Lady of Encarnacion, the saint of the village in which I visited. I was unprepared to witness the townspeople carry enormous wooden statues of the Virgin Mary, Jesus, and Our Lady of Encarnacion through the streets. Men in dark suits held these statues high above their heads, a local priest reared the front of this parade, and little girls wore the exact clothing of the patron saint, as the procession wound through the main thoroughfare of the village.
I learned that this pink flower blooms only in early September. It is a member of the amaryllis family and is called meninas por escola by the Portuguese people. This translates into English to mean “the girls go back to school”. The history behind the name for the flower is that in many Catholic countries, girls often still wear pink uniforms when they attend school. Portugal is a very Catholic country. And these pink flowers bloom only in September, the ‘back to school’ month for many people throughout the world.
Amy has two daughters. She had been very sick for several months before she died. Her younger daughter Lucy had finished a bachelor’s degree and applied for a master’s degree program for Speech and Language Pathology. Amy’s elder daughter Maddie had also finished her undergraduate degree and had been vying for a spot in a local master’s degree program in Occupational Therapy. Maddie had been placed on the waiting list to get in. Our mother, Amy’s and my sisters, had been a bit of a stickler regarding the need for higher education when it came down to her own daughters. She believed that a woman could not only make her own money, but that a woman could command her independence with a college degree. It is because of her insistence in this path for her girls that we have all become successful in our own right. We have all gone back to school at various stages of our lives, in large part because of a woman who refused to allow us to believe that high school was the end of our schooling. In fact, our mother didn’t throw us parties or give us money when we graduated from high school. “Finishing high school is a basic expectation in life,” she believed. Because finishing high school was not the end of our path to becoming women who could stand alone and make our own living. Our mother was on to something. She wanted more for us. And we all earned more for ourselves. Just as our mother had wanted for us. Until Amy got very sick during the February of 2015. The winter before she knew if her own daughters were accepted into their graduate programs. It was a terrible time, one when we were not sure if Amy would make it from one week to the next. Yet, Amy rallied and became medically stable. She returned home to live with her husband Dave.
Some might say it is unfair to pin hopes and beliefs onto people who have died. I was not in a very good frame of mind after Amy left, though I am one of those people who happens to believe that people wait for something remarkable before they choose to leave this plane of existence. Amy’s husband Dave, a staunch agnostic, recently said that scientists believe there may be eleven different dimensions in which realities can exist. Perhaps Dave and I are on opposite sides of the playing field: spirit versus science. Maybe none of us know anything about life after death. But in this argument, we can converge in the theory that anything is possible. I do know this. Amy should have died sooner than she did. Her body was shutting down. But something inside her waited to pass into another dimension. Something inside her needed to see her girls succeed. Even after she was gone, maybe something inside of Amy watched that procession in Portugal, as the men hefted large statues onto their shoulders and the local girls marched the streets in their handmade costumes of the patron saint, adorned in pink flowers. Perhaps Amy waited to die until she knew her daughters would march in their graduation gowns. This was her last, and most important act, as the primary caregiver of her children. She must have exhaled her final breath and thought, “My girls are going back to school.” Amy’s two daughters, Maddie and Lucy, now work together in the same school to help children with disabilities. They both hold master’s degrees. Their grandmother, the mother of Amy and her sisters who hold her close, will now witness two more of her granddaughters go back to school this fall. She is an avid gardener, this mother of Amy. She planted the bulbs of the meninas por escola in her garden a few years back. They used to bloom pink, as they do in Portugal. Yet the soil is different in Baltimore and the blooms have adapted to new land; they are now the color of tangerines. That is what has happened within our family, as we learned to live without Amy. Our flowers still bloom, they are just a different color now. But some things have remained the same in our family and always shall. The girls will always go back to school.
Max weighed less than 10 pounds when he met his humans. He was merely a 4 week-old puppy back then. But because dogs do not understand their own age, weight or the passage of time, these things were not on his radar. Instead, Max paid attention to the home in which he was placed. There was carpeting underneath his tiny paws, a lively human woman who cooked things on a skillet and a few other humans whose feet he noticed as they walked by him. But there was one human who came to the house infrequently who really made Max stand up and pay attention. This human smelled of testosterone. He must be transitioning from a boy into a man, Max figured, because that hormone was potent in this human. He also gave off a scorching energy – this human had a raging fire underneath his skin. When Max leapt onto the lap of this particular human, the dog became suddenly aware of something breeding under the human’s left thigh. It was like a bunch of black fleas, clustered together on a bone. Max nestled himself onto the lap of the human, and felt scared, angry and emboldened to do something about the black spot on his human’s bone. Yes, Max decided: this one is MY human! Even if he rarely comes by, this is the person who I must protect.
Richie the human spent two years in a hospital for cancer. From age twelve to fourteen, Richie lived in a small room on a hospital bed, with another twin-sized bed for his mother to sleep upon. The osteosarcoma that tore through Richie’s young system destroyed his left femur bone. There was a brilliant physician, a young doctor who loved to throw cancer on the floor and stomp upon it, who took on Richie’s case. This doctor removed Richie’s left thigh bone and replaced it with a metal apparatus which resembled the same bone which had become rotten by cancer. But that wasn’t all: Richie needed cycles of chemotherapy which lasted the two years that he spent in the hospital. Richie was only allowed to go home on occasional weekends. On his first weekend back from the hospital, he met the dog Max. Richie and Max bonded immediately. But what happened when the human came home from the hospital was that his body responded to the new environment with a raging fever (this was the scorching smell that the dog sensed without a thermometer). Richie usually left his home within 36 hours after arriving, leaving Max behind. Neither being had any choice in their circumstances then. So, they both waited to be reunited. They had their occasional weekends over the span of two years. But that did not weaken the bond between the dog and his human. Max paced and waited for Richie to return. At the age of fourteen, Richie was released from the cancer hospital. Those dark fleas that had infested themselves in his bones were now gone. Richie had a brand new femur made of titanium. When Richie returned to his home, Max never left his side. Richie trained Max to stay close to him and not run away, as the human could not run after the dog with his new metal femur. The dog knew all of this, and never strayed away, no matter what other distractions were around. A few years later, Richie met a girl in school. Her name was Hillarie. Richie dated Hillarie for several months and figured it was time to introduce her to his family. But Richie’s relationship to his high school sweetheart came with a contingency: “I really like you, Hillarie. But I have this dog Max. He and I are very close. And if he doesn’t like you, I am not sure that this is going to work.”
It was a celebratory time, when this human couple knew a great passion of theirs would be realized, with the food truck. And the dog Max was elated. He loved his new human Hillarie (she bought him really good food and he really loved sleeping in bed between his two humans). But there came a day when Richie was grilling outside and Max was next to him, when something terrible happened. Richie tried to climb stairs to get more ingredients for food and he fell suddenly, as he grabbed for his left femur. Max felt great fear. Hillarie sat down on the steps and cried human tears. Loud sounds and flashing lights brought big men to lift Max’s human onto a metal thing with wheels and they took him away.
But then one day, Hillarie left the house. She came back home with Richie! He was walking with these long metal sticks. Max did not like these sticks. Not at all! But that did not stop him from jumping all over his human. Richie finally sat down on a chair. Max catapulted his tiny body up onto the chair and immediately sniffed his human’s left thigh. There were no black fleas infesting the bone. There was a new smell of a different type of metal, but it was not dangerous. *** In human medical language, Richie’s original titanium femur that was implanted when he was 12 had shattered when he was grilling outside with Max. This was because the human had been walking on it for the last decade and it had not been able to endure the stressors that working as a chef, or living in general, would place upon it. After this most recent fall, Richie was immediately sent back to the brilliant physician who had fabricated the initial femur; this same doctor created a new femur made of cobalt chromium. Richie is responding beautifully to his new bone and there is no return of his osteosarcoma. Max is now eleven years old. He remains intently vigilant on the well-being of his humans. At merely 10 pounds in size, Max is entirely convinced that he is the caregiver of his family. Hillarie is actually taking care of everyone, though she would never tell that to Max. Richie has decided to keep his food truck, despite the major physical setback that occurred just as he purchased it. Some dreams cannot be smothered in the wake of adolescent cancer or a fall on the steps. These stirrings of life must keep going. Just as Max waited for Richie, through all of the absences and the sickness, some creatures watch us and wait for what lies in store for us. They know the weight of our vision, even if they only weigh 10 pounds. There are jobs that one associates with the art of caregiving: nurses, firefighters, teachers and parents are a few obvious choices. But I have found that there is a group of people who are very underrated in their ability to care for us and protect us from harm. These are the people who work in pest control. They are exterminators. I have met many in my line of work as a physical therapist. They have unusual injuries, like straining their shoulders from carrying a heavy pack of insecticide to spray throughout the basement of a factory. They tend to hurt their backs from crouching into corners to apply caulking, which prevents bugs and rodents from entering our homes. Most of us never consider how hard the people in this line of work fight for us. They destroy rat colonies, prevent the reproduction of German cockroaches and discover the portal of entry where mice sneak into our homes, searching for the tiniest crumbs from last night’s take-out order.
My friend Paul was not born into the extermination business. Rather, he bought one from his father-in-law, Narciso. Narciso’s business had been booming in the 1990’s, and Narciso was ready to retire. He sold his business to an employee back then, and that employee had run the business into the ground. Paul witnessed the business of his father-in-law sink, become hollow and ill-producing of money. Paul was not the sort of guy who had ever thought about pest control; but he was also the sort of guy who did not like to see an empire fall. Paul knew that this legacy of his father-in-law would be valuable to his wife and children, though he had never spoken about it. Paul decided to take over this extermination business of his wife’s father. If you ask him about it, he will tell you that it is a profitable business. Paul is proud of the work that his team is doing in the field to destroy the small creatures that spread disease and create a nuisance for humans. But he does not realize how much he is helping humanity. And it was not until last year that I realized what Paul was doing, until one of Nature’s creatures was more than a pesky nuisance in my own life. It was just last May when I came down with a very high fever. I was due to attend my niece’s wedding in Pittsburgh, and became quite ill. I called my primary doctor and explained my symptoms: muscle and joint aches, profound fatigue and a fever of 102 degrees. My doctor told me to take Tylenol and rest. She and I both believed that I had come down with the flu. The symptoms did not abate, but when I finally got into the shower two days later, I glanced down at my abdomen and saw a black spot. I looked closer. It was a tick, embedded in my skin. I called my primary doctor, who promptly extracted the tick and sent it out for testing. In the meantime, she prescribed an antibiotic, and after taking it for a few days, I felt well enough to see my niece get married in the Iron City of Pittsburgh. Upon arriving home from this magnificent celebration, my doctor informed me that the tick which was sent out to be tested was a Lone Star Tick. This particular insect had given me a case of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. I was very relieved to hear of this diagnosis, as Lyme’s disease is quite prevalent in the part of the country where I live. Moreover, Lyme’s disease has a very nasty way of sticking around in the body for years after the tick’s initial bite. Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, on the other hand, retreats with the use of doxycycline, a cheap and effective antibiotic. My doctor was not as optimistic as I was, however. “You need to see an Infectious Disease Specialist,” she warned. “I am not skilled at diagnosing tick bites, and I want to make sure that you get to the root cause of this problem.” I scheduled an appointment with an Infectious Disease doctor. I went to his office in Edison, NJ. I was ushered into a treatment room and waited to meet him. A kindly, rotund Indian physician entered the room. He was wearing a double-breasted suit. Everything about the man was elegant; his handshake, his countenance and the way he addressed me as ‘dear’. This physician took his time asking me questions. He reviewed the lab reports sent from my primary doctor, as he rubbed his right temple with his index finger. At last, he looked up at me. “It seems as though you have been treated accordingly for everything a person might contract from a tick,” he said. “The antibiotic administered to you has cured your Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, but it also would have treated Lyme’s disease, because you and your doctor caught this on time.” I was overjoyed. The doctor grinned when he saw my gleeful response. “But there is something else I must tell you, dear. I treat many people who have been bitten by ticks. They tend to get fearful, and they pin all manner of blame on the tick. Many people get health problems, often decades after their initial tick bite, and they go back to the moment when they were bitten. They spend their entire lives chasing the tick. Whatever you do, do not chase the tick. Everything that happened with this tick is over now.” As I drove home on that sunny afternoon, I thought of Paul and his extermination business. I recalled a story that his wife Suzee had told me a few years back. During Hurricane Irene, in 2011, many homes near where Paul and Suzee resided were flooded with water. One local widow had placed all of her appliances and worldly goods on her front lawn after the flood. This widow left her home to run errands and returned to it, only to find that her kitchen appliances had been stolen. Paul remembered this. And when the walls were torn down to rebuild this widow’s home, extensive termite damage was revealed. Paul took his teenaged son Michael (who had no experience spraying insecticides), back to the house and treated it to destroy the termites. He did this and never sent a bill to the homeowner. I have no doubt that the widow of the flooded house, the one who had lost her husband to something I do not know about, the same one who had lost her appliances to theft after a major flood, would describe Paul as a caregiver. In the worst of moments, he had helped her. Paul never talks about this story. Maybe it is because he does not see himself as a hero. But maybe, also, he still does not know that he is a caregiver to so many.
We all have a tick, a thing that we believe has poisoned us, an old memory or idea that embeds itself in our abdomens. It is an ugly little creature, one that met us years back, one that we are quite certain will stay with us forever. What we fail to remember is that there are others who will protect us from this insect. There are the Indian doctors who will stop the disease process from continuing, they will remind us to stop looking back and blaming the tick for all that went wrong. Then, there are the Pauls who will show up, when we have lost everything, to help us preserve the remaining foundations of our homes. These exterminators will fight like the dickens to keep us safe and help us rebuild from the time that the tick showed up. We are not alone. We have so many people who help us in the run of life, people who can chase the very enemy within, the one we thought only we could see. We will know when we have met such people, because we will stop chasing the tick. We will become free when we remember that the people caulking up the cracks and spraying down the enemy are protecting us. And they don’t even mind doing it, because they don’t just like their jobs. They LOVE their jobs!
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