44. The Karma of Words
NANCYFlash forward eighteen months after Johnny's death. I am sitting at a long conference table with the downtown skyline and San Diego Bay outside the window. Flanked by six lawyers who are deposing Megan, Michael, and me for the malpractice suit we have filed against four doctors and the hospital where John died. Dan Deuprey, the lawyer who represents John's orthopedic surgeon, has just succeeded in reducing me to tears with his sarcasm and innuendo. I ask to be excused from the room. Since he's there to defend the doctor we believe to be most responsible, he is merciless with me. After I leave, one of the other lawyers turns in anger to Deuprey. "Do you think you were mean enough to her?"
The sarcasm goes right over his head and he smirks. I'd been warned about lawyers like him who thrive on attempts to strip family members of their dignity in order to save money for the malpractice insurance company. I was warned that the defense lawyers would tear my life apart. Michael Kaplan, my lawyer, is there, holding my hand through all of it. We have become very good friends. Three days later, at the end of the twenty-seven-hour- long deposition, the court reporter tells me she has never seen a lawyer be so sensitive to his client's needs.
For four years following Johnny's death, the defense lawyers tried to level me. They pried into our lives, attempting to prove that Megan, Michael, and I didn't have a strong enough relationship with John to warrant any financial consideration. They demanded to see Megan's diary, and a list of each gift and every dollar Johnny had ever given us. Thinking this would force me to spend hours going over our bank statements, I frustrated their efforts by stating that Johnny gave me all his money to manage. They obtained confidential records from every therapist we'd seen, desperately trying to prove there was no love in our family.
"What right do they have to pry into our personal lives this way?" I asked Michael Kaplan. "The marriage isn't on trial here. We're talking about mistakes made by the doctors."
"If you deny them access to the records, they'll accuse you of hiding something," he explained.
That night, after two days of depositions, Deuprey took my lawyer aside. "Tell Mrs. Steinbeck she might want to leave the children at the hotel. I'm going to be attacking the marriage."
What those guys didn't know was that after we filed the lawsuit, an anonymous typewritten letter arrived at Kaplan's office.
To the attorney for the Steinbeck case:
Too many times hospitals cut corners and costs. It is only when someone dies that these areas of neglect are evident. Hospital relies on it's "reputation" to get around many quality of care issues. What happened to Mr. Steinbeck was below the standard of care.
Here are some items that need closer inspection
1. Was there a crash cart in the OR? NO.
2. Was the OR staff familiar with it once it came into the room? NO.
3. Was a code called? NO. Why not?
4. Why is there no official code blue record as required? NO. Nothing was filled out.
There is a large liability all because the hospital did not want to spend dollars on lifesaving equipment. Ask the nurses.
When the doctors heard that Ralph Nader's group, Congress Watch, had asked if I would testify before Congress and Hillary Clinton about the rights of malpractice victims, their lawyers threatened me with slander suits. No matter how much they tried to torture me, nothing was going to stop me from seeing the lawsuit through.
Just before the operation, Megan had asked John if she could use his X-rays and MRI film for an art project. A kind nurse provided them after his death. In the envelope, we discovered the written results of a chest X-ray. "Abnormal finding in the patient's pulmonary vascularity. CAT scan recommended." That's when I called Michael Kaplan. For months, I spent a nightmare existence pouring over John's autopsy reports with my lawyer, learning the size and weight of his lungs and brain, the lengths of all fourteen scars, and the ways in which they had compromised his medical care.
Back in the conference room, I dried my eyes and was ready to resume the seventeenth hour of questioning. Deuprey leveled his guns at me again. He asked questions in a flat, needling voice, hoping that I would eventually wear down under his sneering. His nonverbal message was, "You're just a pathetic widow. What right do you have to question the authority of any doctor?" All the other lawyers had been extremely polite, but I could tell that their egos weren't involved the way his was.
Deuprey looked at the doctor's record of our first visit. "The next sentence I'd like to bring to your attention in this medical record dated January 17, 1991, is as follows -- do you have that in front of you to read along with me -- 'I have advised Mr. Steinbeck that because of his medical problems, i.e., hemochromatosis, diabetes, and obesity, that we will need medical consultation preoperatively.' Does that appear to be an accurate account of the conversation you and your husband had with Dr. L.?"
"When we saw Dr. L., we told him about John's complex medical history, as well as his bouts with congestive heart failure, which aren't even listed here. Nor does the doctor say anything about our repeated requests for him to get all of John's medical records and to consult closely with an internist concerning the results of John's pre-op tests. We asked for all that to be done before Dr. L. decided to go ahead with the operation. None of that was done. L. might as well have put a gun to my husband's head." I knew Deuprey didn't like me talking like that, but it was interesting to bait him. He hated women and, sadistically, I wanted to remind him why. For the most part, I was imperious. Johnny taught me that one well.
"If he took my husband's medical condition and his life seriously, he should have ordered John's records from Scripps Clinic. We would never have consented to the operation had we known that they had not reviewed those records, let alone that they had ignored abnormal test results."
Over lunch, Kaplan said, "Deuprey never wants to face you in front of a jury. You're too good. You'd have their sympathy. You're the kind of witness he'd rather die than cross- examine." Since Johnny signed an arbitration agreement before the operation with Dr. L., this part of the lawsuit will never go to trial. A judge and two lawyers will try it in arbitration, which has the reputation in California for being a kangaroo court. Kaplan cracks, "You're being tried by three guys with a hundred-year cumulative history of thinking they're God."
Taunting, Deuprey attempted to undermine my anger. "What is your belief as to what any CAT scan would have shown, had it been done?"
He's not going to trap me on that one. "I'm not a medical expert," I snapped.
"Do you have a personal belief as to what it would have shown?" he tried again, flatly.
''I'll have an expert witness testify to that when the time comes."
"I don't want you to guess or speculate, but obviously you attach a great deal of importance to the failure to run a CAT scan. I would like to ask you why it is you feel that the CAT scan would have been important in your husband's case."
"Obviously the X-ray department felt it was important enough to recommend, or they wouldn't have written the report. I believe that anything that cautioned the doctors into looking further into John's medical history was highly important. Perhaps if that CAT scan had been done, my husband would be alive today, and my children would have a father."
"All you can do is basically guess or speculate about that?"
This time it was my turn to sneer. "You just said you didn't want me to guess or speculate, and then you asked me why I thought the CAT scan was so important. That's what I told you I'd be doing in this answer, because I'm not a medical expert, so don't object to my response."
Wearily, he sighs, "That's fine. Thank you for answering the question."
The next day, I left Megan and Michael at the hotel. I wasn't trying to spare them Deuprey's attempts at airing dirty laundry, because they knew it all anyway. I wanted to give them a break.
For eight more hours, Deuprey asked me all kinds of questions about Johnny's drinking and the problems it had caused in the marriage. I had nothing to hide. His shameless questions about John's addictions weren't about me, or my marriage, or even the person who had died on the operating table. They were about the disease. He acted as if I should be mortified to talk about the wreckage of John's life in front of strangers, but I wasn't. My pride in our relationship and Johnny's successes, my refusal to hang my head about the bad times, only caused consternation in him. I knew what he was doing. He hoped to portray John as a hopeless junkie loser, so they wouldn't have to compensate our loss. Deuprey looked particularly ridiculous when he sanctimoniously asked, "Have you derived any comfort from the Buddhist belief that a person dies when his time is up?" As if that would let them off the hook.
Malpractice is hard to prove. We had such a clear case that local doctors appeared as our expert witnesses, which is highly unusual. Although we lost the arbitration, one of the doctors offered to settle out of court and, in the long run, John died a winner. The kids and I are winners because we loved him. He died at peace, having forgiven those who warranted his pardon, and eliminating people from his life who diminished him. You can't get more real or successful than that.
***
The night before John's operation, I had the dream that Sable, our German Shepherd puppy, had died. A voice told me, I am taking my angel back today. You have spent as much time with him as can possibly be allowed. You must accept this, and never doubt that it was not meant to be. There is a greater plan here. Do not feel sorry for yourself This is not an accident.
I woke Johnny up with coffee and climbed back into bed, snuggling down with my cup, gingerly wrapping my ankle around his. He called that Chinese Love, where a couple feels so entwined, their feet naturally gravitate toward each other in a graceful knot of union. "When the marriage is that strong, you can run a village on the power."
I told him about the dream. He promised if anything happened, he would be our guardian angel and never leave our side. I promised I'd finish his book.
One of my girlfriends called to wish us luck. ''I'm lying here with my beautiful wife, feeling so peaceful," he told her. "If I'd known life was going to be this good when I quit using, I would have stopped twenty years ago."
We finished our coffee and John took one last hot tub in the morning sun. I watched him through the bedroom window as I dressed. What if he dies? What if something goes wrong? I chose to ignore those thoughts. Later, friends would ask me why we failed to see the puppy dream as an omen.
I drove John to the hospital. An abandoned wheelchair sat near the entrance. Johnny waited in it while I parked the car. I carried his overnight bag and a cardboard Chinese Good Luck God that Megan and I had picked out the day before in Chinatown. He hadn't seen it before and he frowned at it through his pain, half kidding, "That isn't a funeral symbol, is it?"
After registering, they put us in a private room. It was brilliant with sunlight and in that light I felt waves of tenderness and hope for the return of John's health and mobility after the operation. I went to a nearby party store and bought crepe-paper garlands of vivid parrots and tropical fish and a massive bouquet of balloons. I wanted to fill that sterile anonymous cubicle with vibrant colors and life, to counter the antiseptic air and sterile gleaming instruments. I wanted to surround Johnny with colorful, exotic animals, symbols of my love for him and the realms in which we dwelt. As I transformed the room, I thought a hospital room had probably never looked like that, a tropical jungle paradise. Yet, in spite of the brilliant colors, I felt as though I were swimming through a murky dream, moving out of time. The day existed only to be gotten through.
Out in the hall I ran into the Chicana housekeeper who used to clean my office at the McDonald Center. I thought her familiar face was a good sign, and I brought her in to meet John. A doctor stopped by to ask routine questions. When he noticed John's abdominal gunshot wound from Vietnam, it suddenly hit me, after all those years of being with him, how lucky I was that it hadn't killed him. He could have been struck in the heart and I would never have had the chance to know him. Why hasn't that occurred to me before? I have taken so much for granted with this man. Why does that bullet hole suddenly seem so meaningful? It's like watching a foreign movie, where you don't understand the symbolism.
When the nurse came to fill the IV with pain meds, we agreed that I should go home and help Megan get ready for her trip to Costa Rica. She was leaving the next day to start her job as a photojournalist for the gringo newspaper in San Jose. John would be sleeping until the late afternoon, when they had scheduled the operation.
Four hours later, the kids and I returned to his room. They floated around his bed, playing with the electric controls and teasing him, giggling, and joking. Michael went out to smoke a cigarette on the stairs. Later, he said he had a strong feeling that something bad was going to happen, but he just ignored it. When he told me about it, he wondered if he had done something wrong by not speaking up.
"How can you follow up on every thought?" I asked. "You'd be paralyzed."
Later, Megan said she hated the way the orderly helped John up on the gurney. "He was so sloppy about it, like he didn't know how special Daddy was."
I did not kiss John good-bye. Whenever one of us was leaving, the other got kissed or it was "Where's my kiss? Come and kiss me! You want a kiss? Give me a kiss! Kissy-kiss!" We spent so much time kissing and saying I love you in those last years that I've never felt guilty. I know why I didn't kiss him good-bye. After all the drug crises and drunken ordeals, I still couldn't stand to see him drugged even on the painkillers he needed. I looked away. I'm not mad at myself about that. I understand why I couldn't. It's sad, but if you'd been through what I've been through with John's addictions, and kissed him as much as I had, you'd know it wasn't important.
As they wheeled him out, I never thought about going down to meet the anesthesiologist. I had fought so hard for his life in so many medical settings. Now that he was sober, I couldn't fight anymore. I had to let him handle the situation on his own. Perhaps if I had accompanied him, they might have asked more questions about his medical history. They might have noticed that his tests were abnormal and postponed the surgery.
Megan and I dropped Michael off at the house and went shopping for her trip. In the aisles of the grocery store I started feeling dread. I just wanted the hours to pass quickly. We mindlessly watched a rented video, Daddy's Dying, Who's Got the Will? while Michael took a nap. It was about a family squabbling over inherited money. Disgusted, we stopped the tape and never got the symbolism till the next day.
"Mom," Megan suggested, "why don't you call to see if John's out of the operating room?" As I put the phone to my ear and started to dial, I heard the doctor's voice. The phone never even rang.
"I want you to get in your car immediately and drive here very slowly."
"Is he all right?"
''There's a problem" was all he'd say.
I slipped into shock. Megan knew; she didn't ask for any explanation. We looked at each other in panic. I didn't want to wake Michael from his innocent sleep, so we left him, just in case. Within several minutes I had called every shaman, nun, psychic, and lama that we knew with the same short message: "I think John is dying, can you bring him back?" Megan grabbed John's mala, Tibetan rosary beads. We got in the car and tore down to the hospital.
They put us in a tiny room. It was airless and had no windows, designed by a heartless architect who thought it would be an efficient holding cell for the relatives of dying patients. Someone went to get the doctor.
"It will take about twenty more minutes for us to know what's wrong," he said breathlessly. He did not tell us they'd been pounding on John's chest for an hour trying desperately to bring back some brain-dead semblance of him so that they'd be absolved. I wasn't sure what he was going back to look for but I didn't want to waste time by asking.
Without a word, Megan and I began to pray. I remembered the dream, I saw all the signs, I heard the voice saying this was no accident, not to feel sorry for myself, to accept the death.
If your time has come, I'm not going to hang on, I release you with all my heart and all my love. But if it's not time, and you can possibly come back to stay with us, please return because I'll die without you.
The doctor returned with four others. White coats all in a row. They said they were sorry in unison. He was gone. Do you want to request an autopsy? Please sign here. Do you want to go in to say good-bye? Is there anyone we can call?
Swimming in shock, without thinking I called a friend who had lost both her parents in a car crash. I knew she'd be smart about quick decisions. Buddhists don't believe in mutilating the body after death, but she urged me to have an autopsy in case the doctors had screwed up. Then she said very slowly and deliberately, as if she knew that's the way you cut through the cotton batting of trauma, "You need to go in there with the kids and say good-bye. You need to see him."
"I don't want that to be my last memory of him."
"Believe me, it won't," she said. "If you don't, you'll regret it later."
I called Ginny, a coworker from the McDonald Center, who'd been widowed the year before. I knew she'd understand the situation. I asked her to drive us home. And then I gently woke Michael.
"Something's happened with John. Come down here." I wondered how I would tell him. When he walked in, I could see he already knew.
We walked into the silent white room. I saw the body. I saw guilt on the faces of the OR staff. "I saw it too, Mom," Megan said later.
The kids took Johnny's hands and started to cry softly. I never touched him. In his life, John burned hot, like a meteor. His hands were always warm. I loved to squeeze them and play with his fingers. I didn't want to feel cold on his hands. Megan wasn't afraid; she just sat there braiding his fingers in hers. There was a tube in his mouth, so his lips were formed in a slack smile, cool as he was in life, like a musician in the middle of a riff. For a while it seemed like he was playing a trick on us, and we thought he could open his eyes anytime to see if we'd fallen for it. Megan burst out with a hysterical giggle. "It looks like he's faking, doesn't it?"
Then I knew it wasn't him anymore in that body. This is your death, this is what you look like dead. This is the moment you have courted and flirted with all your life, Johnny. His Bodhisattva sweetness was still palpable in the air.
I said good-bye to the flesh then and turned my attention to Megan and Michael while trying to savor the sacredness of that moment. They hadn't had my dream about taking back the angel. John hadn't just promised that morning that he would always be their guardian angel. I was more focused on comforting them than my pain. I knew that Johnny, the Night Tripper, was not clinging to his body. There would be no more sustenance from that body. I could feel him holding me up. That's when I saw all the bruises on his chest from the paddles, massive black and blue swirls. I wondered what in hell they thought they were bringing back. How can I leave you here? I'll never play with that patch of hair on your chest. I'll never kiss the sweet place on your neck, behind your beard, or the Mick Jagger fullness of your lips. How can I say good-bye to those treasures? I thought I'd have their bliss for my whole lifetime.
Then there was nothing left to do but gather his things. We went to his room and took down all the crepe-paper streamers. We released the balloons in the parking lot, giddy in our shock, laughing "Catch them, Johnny! These are for you!" as they floated above the hospital walls and faded into starlight.
All night, people gathered at the house. John's presence was so strong, the love was so palpable in every room, that most of us were months away from believing he was totally gone. There is a heightened sense when death is so near, and we stayed up till dawn, talking about him.
"He was a bearer of miracles."
"He was so utterly direct and clear and open-hearted."
"He was an incredible soul."
Three days later, one hundred people gathered in our house for the funeral service. Johnny's body had been autopsied and was awaiting cremation, but we went ahead because friends had flown in from all over the country. We held a Buddhist ceremony, burning his photograph and chanting him well wishes. Then, like an AA meeting, people spoke from the circle. It took two hours for everyone to empty out their feelings, and here are some of the sentiments which were expressed.
"I only knew John when he came to speak at my writing class," Karen Kenyon started. "I felt very touched by him and privileged to know him. The first time I ever heard him talk I thought that I'd never been around someone who was so completely honest, so completely down to earth, with such candor. One time he spoke about impermanence, and how that is a gift that is given when someone dies young. I think of that, and of his humor. I walked out to the parking lot with him and he pointed to his new car. He said it was financed by a Buddhist credit union, which meant you got to pay it back over your next lifetime."
An AA buddy remembered, "The first time I heard John share at a meeting, I said to myself, 'Holy tomoly, this guy is really something.' First I thought he might want to dominate the group, because his presence was so strong, but he was extremely genuine and caring. He had a lot of intuition and insight. He wanted to learn and contribute."
Paula, my receptionist, said, "I didn't know John very well. I met him through Nancy at work. The most vivid memory I have of him is that he called Nancy about five times a night. Instead of announcing him as John, I'd tell her 'The Hubala' was on the phone. He was like a teddy bear you could just hug. He was so gentle. The way he used to call her so many times, I thought he must really love her."
Allen, our elderly neighbor, added, "The thing that struck me most about John was the closeness we shared. We didn't get together very often, just for a minute here and there. I'll never forget the first time I met him out in front of our houses. He told me his name and I told him mine. As he walked away he said, 'Well, I'll see you, Allen.' It made me feel good that we were on a first-name basis right away. I appreciated that. Naturally, it was a shock to me when I heard his name was John Steinbeck. I had to think that over for about thirty seconds and I called him John from then on."
Then Thom spoke. "John and I came in like Twain and his comet. It never occurred to me that we wouldn't go out together. I think he'd be unhappy if we didn't get the joke. He's been practicing for this for as long as I remember. We'd better take up a collection for his parents the next time around because they're going to need all the help they can get.
"I don't remember a time in my life without having him. We've counted a lot of coup and we've never been done in, never lost a battle. I'm going to miss him. We used to have a lot of codes, shorthand for how things were going. When it was time to lick honey off the razor blade, one of the things he was perfect at, the codeword was, 'Say farewell to all my friends on shore.' For him, I say farewell. He loved you all, he needed you all, as much as we needed him. He loved the illusion. I'm proud of him. I'm prouder of him than any human being in the world. Hello John."
Megan was next. "The first time I saw John, it was instant recognition. I felt like I had seen him so many times before. I'll never forget every day I spent with him and every day I was apart from him. He'll remain forever in my heart. I can feel him walking behind me and protecting me and holding me and guiding me. I love him. I can feel his little hands in my hands and I don't have to say good-bye because he's always right here and he'll always be right here."
"Finding Johnny dead at the hospital was the worst thing that's ever happened to me," I said. "I've always expected it. He had nine lives and we were on his tenth. It's something we've all known, that he was too precious to be in our lives for a long time. I'm so grateful for every day I spent with him.
"When we got back to the house, Megan said, 'Mom, it seems so easy. It just happened so easily.' I feel like he's going to be with all of us forever in our hearts and in our wisdom. He loved and valued every person in this room. He knew there's a place where he could work on a higher, deeper level, where he could impart more truth, and I think that truth will come through us. It's not like we need to let go of John and forget him. We need to listen and carry him in our hearts. He was a truly holy being and this is a very dark time, with the Gulf War starting.
"I'm really scared and I want people to call me. Don't let me be alone. He filled our hearts with laughter and love, especially in the last three years when he was sober."
An old friend from Boulder said, "John and I shared something very precious. The number- one thing in his life is his beloved wife, Nancy. He shared her so beautifully. I never knew a man who loved his wife and told everybody and taught every man he came in touch with how to treat a woman like John did. He was such a good dad. He was the best husband and companion for his wife. I will miss him so much."
Another friend said, "John was one of the funniest people I've ever known. I loved him because his mind scared the shit out of me and I could count on him for that. Whatever exchange we had, I could count on that he would touch me deeply or terrify me. They were both really great feelings because they reflected his ability to eat life for breakfast. The thought of not having that piercing honesty around is hard to live with."
Then Michael spoke. "A lot of feelings are coming up for me. I've been thinking about all the good memories, all the stuff I ever did for him and all the stuff he ever did for me, all the things we did together. He was my best friend. I've never met anyone with such power and compassion. He could dazzle me with his wisdom. He used to brag to me, but I knew it was true, that he knew just about everything about anything. He'd tell me that in the hot tub. If anyone else ever told me that, I'd think, Man, that cat is full of shit. But I believed him.
"I'd look forward to the nights when I came home and he'd always have the hot tub ready for me. It was kind of like the guru sitting underneath a shady tree, and you go to mountaintop to meet him. I'd meet my guru in the hot tub, and his big fat guru belly would be there kickin' it and it was like instantly he'd know what was going on with me. I could tell him about my problems from girls to school to friends and he could always get me out on a good note. It was like he'd been there. He could relate ten times over and he'd share his solutions. I'd say, 'You are a fucking guru, man. You are God.'
"We've been looking at the photo albums and every part of his personality is there; no picture is the same because he had so many aspects about him. Actually, he gave me the runaround about everything. You couldn't slip much past him. His friends were my friends and he always told me how much he loved my friends."
One of the teenage boys laughed when he remembered, "John once called me a gratuitous motherfucker." His brother went on to say, "John turned our lives upside down. He was an example of tremendous will, of the fight to be free, to be outrageous just for the sake of being outrageous. He always threw himself out there and we stood around with our jaws on the floor. He had aggressive sides, scary sides, but his heart was so gentle. Sometimes he'd stay with us when I was little. He'd sleep outside on a lawn chair in the summer. I'd ask him why and he told me he just liked to be out there. He's out there now."
Another of Michael's friends said, "I remember the time I took Mike for a ride on my motorcycle. The next time I was at the house, John met me at the door. He put his hand on my shoulder and his face real close to mine and said, 'Say, Matt, the next time you take my son on your motorcycle without a helmet, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to get a can of gasoline and pour it all over your bike and then I'm going to light a match and watch that sucker burn.' Then he grinned and said, 'You got it?' I got it."
A friend who'd lost a child said, "John listened in a special way that most people don't do. He talked in a special way that most people don't talk. He filled my heart with so much warmth, and so did his family. I know that he's here with all of us, but I hate death, and I hate that I'm not going to see him walk out of his office and feel the cuteness about him." Another friend remembered the black powder bombs Johnny loved to explode in our backyard. "One time I was over visiting them and John set off several underground charges which left large holes in the lawn. The Boulder bomb squad showed up, complete with fire trucks. John was very polite with them. He took them around to the back and showed them the holes and asked if they'd seen the movie Caddyshack. He told them he had a gopher problem and had gotten the idea of blowing them up from the movie. The bomb squad guys were fascinated, though you couldn't tell if it was by the theory or by John's name. Anyway, they left without giving him a citation, so they must have bought his story. By the way, there are no gophers in Boulder!"
Gesar Mukpo, Rinpoche's teenage son, said, "My memories of John are as a young kid. There were never any problems when I came over to play with Michael. He never made it difficult for me. It was always fun to be around him. He always let us do pretty much whatever we wanted. He didn't give us a hard time about how crazy we were. He didn't need to take control because he had control. He died being who he was, fearless. He wasn't afraid at all. I want to say, 'Good job!'"
And Thom concluded, "I'd like to thank you all for coming, if only because I needed the healing. I couldn't do it by myself. I think we all need it, to the degree that we miss him. We want to keep intimately that part of him that affected each of us, affected by his recovery, by his humor. A lot has been lifted off me in the last two hours that I thought I was going to have to carry for a long time. I wasn't looking forward to it at all. Now that I know I can sucker you guys into the other half of the job, it makes it a lot easier."
Our old friend Denault Blouin wrote this poem the day after Johnny died. It is based on the Buddhist reminders we chant with each prostration:
This precious human body, free and well favored, is difficult to earn, easy to lose. Now I must do something meaningful. The world and its inhabitants are like a bubble. Death comes without warning. This body will be a corpse. At that time the Dharma will be my only help. I will practice it with exertion. Just like a feast before the executioner leads you to your death, I will cut desire and attachment and attain enlightenment through exertion.
GATE (which means "Gone" in Sanskrit)
In Memory of John Steinbeck IV
DEATH
8:30 A.M.: Standing in the unemployment line,
Thinking of you
COMES
And you're gone:
Rocket man
With your lazy rolling voice
Stupendous indulgences and generosities
Huge storehouse mind
And impossible neurotic upheavals
WITHOUT
Matt, 14, bursts into tears when he hears-
"This is the first person I've ever known who's died."
WARNING
But there are signs:
Famous alcoholic father,
Born-in-the-blood addictions
Magnified by late 20th-century maha-cravings
Liver literally rusting away
Chi splitting surgery
Back-breaking pain, walking with cane,
Not ever getting all better.
This pain never goes away
Can drive a man to drink and drugs,
Can wake him up, did.
You finally
Learned to let go
Embrace Big No
Every day
Not another drop
Self-intoxication stopped
Sober, boring path followed step by step
To cut root cause
And live with incurable loss.
In this raw war-fire wind
You were born and died in
Best medicine: compassion
Good-bye, John
Halifax
February 8, 1991
John Palmer, the director of the cult classic Ciao, Manhattan, starring Edie Sedgwick, sent this from Maui after hearing about Johnny's passing. They met in London during the early seventies. Palmer was so intrigued with John's stories about Vietnam that he promptly went over there in search of Sean Flynn -- to no avail.
It's a funny thing about people. The effect they have on you. Who they are in the world. How they are in the world. Steinbeck was one of those people. One of those people who had an effect. We used to call him Steinbeck. And of course that had extra meaning beyond the obvious. I mean, in John's case, Steinbeck was not just the name. It was the name. A name much much more than the imputation that we do when we call people by their last names. He was ... Steinbeck. Yet, no confusion with the father. No need for differentiation. It was all packed in. The father, the son, the war, the booze, the pot, the women. John was Steinbeck, pure and simple. On his own. In his own right. In spite of it all. Steinbeck.
And you loved him. Not adoration. But some kind of love he brought out. Love beyond the draw of the name. Beyond the absolutely soft, ordinary person beneath the persona. You just plain loved him because he had guts. Guts with a brain. Guts with words. Guts with heart. Guts that could get down.
John Steinbeck the Fourth was one complex cookie. You wanted him to like you because he was real and because he wouldn't put up with any bullshit and yet he understood your bullshit and accepted you for what was good in you. He knew what good was. Even when he couldn't do good and that further magnified his charm. Especially, because he was high grade, once removed. Closer than the real McCoy.
Of course, the fact that he was in binary orbit with a star, his silent star, made him all the more fascinating. And he knew it. He played with that in no-ego. Perfectly. As if the torment of all that was tedious. Like a cat playfully batting a mouse. Humor, the dance. You knew it. He knew it. Unspoken speech.
Now the fact that John had carried an M-16 and knew how to use it and did, the fact that he could describe the trip a grenade takes across a wide green valley high as a kite -- slow-mo smoke on the other side. Stoned. Puff. Made him all the more fascinating. This was like getting high with Humphrey Bogart. Cigarette smoke, whiskey. And of course, the voice. The same kind of voice we all heard in the movies. Like when they first got those huge baritone speakers at the Strand in the fifties. John had the voice. Wraparound deep. Comforting and a little slowed down. Like the beginning of a hallucination. Totally clear. Enunciatively perfect. But still on the doorstep to oblivion. Just outside.
The fun of knowing him was what the magic was doing to you. Not just in the moment. That was the material. All the experiences needed material. But what was really going on had something to do with authenticity. The special truth that knows death at maximum risk. There's plenty of that around but very little that knows the lines and what they mean at the same time. John had all that going and knew it and wasn't particularly interested. This is one of the reasons he was a man's man.
Have you ever been in a tunnel on a train when another train was coming in the other direction? That's how John and I met. Imagine the noise and the excitement and then somehow it dissolves into a view from the side. His train is like a subway and everything is dark except his car. He's inside and walking around and then he comes to the window. That's kind of how we met and then it was gone. Then the noise comes back.
***
Several days after the ceremony, I was sitting in John's office pouring through the archives, starting to write this book. Feeling overwhelmed, I burst into tears. Johnny, if you really are with me as you promised when I finish your work, show me a sign. I cannot do this alone. There was only one window, and it faced the house next door. I figured all he had to work with was that and the telephone, but I was adamant. If I didn't get a sign, it was over between us.
Suddenly, in the patch of sky above the neighbor's house, a huge bouquet of balloons floated by. There must have been thirty of them, sailing way up high over the coastline. I was thrilled. I got up to watch them from the deck, closing the door to his office, on which Johnny had recently tacked a little poem by Po Chu-i.
THE KARMA OF WORDS
He gradually vanquished the demon of wine
And does not get wildly drunk
But the karma of words remains
He has not abandoned verse.
As a Tibetan Buddhist, I am very disappointed in this story. Despite all of John's experience with Buddhist teachings, he failed to get the core lesson: "Self and Others." He certainly didn't care about himself, and he didn't care enough about the persons closest to him to try and bring them happiness, much less people outside his family and in the larger world. He eventually quit drugs and alcohol only because he had taken his body to the absolute limit, and could take it no further. To think what a man with the name of "Steinbeck" could have done to promote the general welfare of humanity. What a waste of human life! His friends and family want to depict him now as a "truly holy being," an "angel," a "god," a "guru," hoping for some Rosicrucian enlightenment. But this man was none of these things. Pitiably, he was a hungry ghost.
-- Tara Carreon
Scroll of the Hungry Ghosts (Gaki-zoshi), Late-Heian Period (Late-12th Century), © 2011 Kyoto National Museum.Hungry Ghosts, by Barbara O'Brien: "Hungry ghost" is one of the six modes of existence. Hungry ghosts are pitiable creatures with huge, empty stomachs. They have pinhole mouths, and their necks are so thin they cannot swallow, so they remain hungry. Beings are reborn as hungry ghosts because of their greed, envy and jealousy. Hungry ghosts are also associated with addiction, obsession and compulsion. The Sanskrit word for "hungry ghost" is "preta," which means "departed one." Many schools of Buddhism leave food offerings on altars for hungry ghosts. In the summer there are hungry ghost festivals throughout Asia that feature food and entertainment for the hungry ghosts.