Why Do It?

Alonzo Skelton
"Why Do It?"
1000 words

Why Do It?

         Jack and I met over Miller Lite and a miter saw. We drank the beer in a weekly celebration of Hump Day and the miter saw to help a mutual friend, Isaac, to convert a garage storage room into a cabana bar.
         One evening, after a celebratory Wednesday afternoon, Jack collapsed onto the ground while getting into his car for the drive home. Isaac helped him to his feet with fuss and concern about his ability to drive, and sent him home with dire warnings to exercise caution. Some temperance crusaders had declared jihad against drinking drivers, and the police had received instructions to bring revenue into the city’s dwindling coffers.
         “Do you think we should cut back on the beer?” Isaac asked.
         Over the next few weeks, Jacks falls occurred with increasing frequency, covering limbs and torso in bruises and lacerations. Friends and family noticed in him a tendency towards a downward gaze and slurred speech. Broken furniture in his home attested to the lack of control in his collapses: he went down like a felled tree—body straight and rigid, backwards. Medical professionals examined him for a litany of conditions and ailments, resulting in a string of misdiagnoses. That went on for two years, until someone settled on Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP)—a rare disease resulting from a damaged gene that regulates tau proteins in the brain. By then, Jack had given up driving and required the constant presence of someone to help him to his feet and to repair the damage done by his falls.
         For some time, Jack and I had spent Saturday afternoons at his place. I live in a small apartment with a tiny west-facing balcony, so those weekly hangout sessions got me out of my cramped living quarters and out into the sunlight and fresh air of his spacious deck and wooded lot. While he awaited his wife’s return from work, we passed the time with beer, small talk, and an occasional run for a lunchtime sandwich. With each passing weekend, I found my role shift away from comrade to caregiver. I considered putting some distance in the friendship. Acting as a caregiver to an invalid was not in my psychological makeup, nor in my list of abilities, I thought. I didn’t act on the impulse—a better part of me rationalized that one does not abandon a friend in his darkest hour.
         Soon, Jack’s condition deteriorated to the use of a walker, but the falls continued with increasing frequency, and in a short time, he found himself confined to a wheelchair. His voice gave way to grunts and growls. The ability to focus the eyes left him. Body functions began to fail. His wife hired a nurse to stay with him while she worked. I attended classes at a local college, but continued to sit with him on Saturdays and made myself available for those times that the nurse needed time off.
         On one of those days that I stayed with him, his wife had returned from work and I opened a beer and sat on the sun-drenched deck with them as she wound down her day.
         “Why do you do this? She asked.
         A fair question; one I had asked of myself without arriving at a better answer than “friendship.” But, that response did not satisfy. I had, after all, spent half-a-century in a hedonistic avoidance of unpleasant and burdensome situations without so much as a glance at the ethics or the consequences of my actions. The question haunted me.
         Why do you do it?
         I couldn’t answer it. I enjoyed the camaraderie, the friendship, but I had walked away from previous friends at real or imagined slights or when relationships taxed my limited inner resources.
         Jack began to lose control of the muscles in his throat. He inhaled—and choked on—food and drink almost as often as he swallowed them. His voice decayed into a hoarse whisper infected by gurgles and grunts. He required a voice amplifier to make himself understood, but I yet had to ask him to repeat himself several times to grasp even a simple sentence. The process exhausted him. And me.
         One day, I said goodbye as I gathered up the stuff I had left lying about. We were alone—his wife prepared dinner in the kitchen. With greater mastery over his voice than I had heard in some time, he said, “Thanks you, Buddy. Your sacrifices are above and beyond the call of duty.”
         “Shipmates,” I said, referring to a shared joke about our common experiences with the US Navy.
         Why do you do it?
         On the drive home, the answer came to me. I had phrased the question against a background of sacrifice, in seeking some benefit in service to another. I saw with sudden clarity that this was not about my friend. My formerly dark, pessimistic view of humanity dissolved with the realization that we give our time and talents for the benefit of someone other than ourselves, not as sacrifice at all, but an opening of the door to the experience of empathy.
         Empathy—it is not simply a word in a dictionary nor a concept for consideration in philosophical discussions. It is not the experience of awareness of one’s mortality—I had engaged that many decades earlier. I found that humans are not, as I had thought, hairless apes with reasoning and mechanical skills; that a sacrifice for the benefit of another is not a sacrifice, but empathy is a gift that evolution has given us so that we can express our humanity.
          learned that my experience with Jack was not about him. Never was. It’s about me, about us and our survival as a species.