THE TRIQUETRA OF LIFE: Wisdom, Wealth, and Wellness

An Excerpt from Chapter Twenty-Four

Path Perilous: My Search for God and the Miraculous

Determined to reenact St. Francis’s frugality, I left my expensive basement apartment on Beacon Street, across from the Charles River Esplanade. On Beacon Hill, I took a room in a five-story brick boarding house for pensioners and retirees—a narrow firetrap worn thin by years. The rent was modest. My third-floor furnished room was little more than a closet, with a tall window opening onto an alley and its iron fire escape.

I abandoned my vocational teaching job to work at a busy hamburger joint, using the grill cookery I had learned at the mental hospital. The place served the lunch crowd on Washington Street—then known as the Combat Zone, quiet by day, raucous after dark. I deliberately avoided the advantages of my college education, making the choice an exercise in detachment from the world.

That summer’s intense heat wave left me lying naked on my bed, a small fan struggling to cool me down. I tried writing sonnets, but my muse failed to stir. Instead, the heavy humidity seemed to open every pore. Unable to write at all, I spent my evenings meeting and talking with elderly neighbors in the five-story tenement.

By then I had let my chestnut-colored beard, flecked with red, grow—perhaps as a  symbol of rebellion.

Three steps from my door lived a woman in her seventies who still volunteered at Mass General Hospital. We met occasionally in her apartment, where she served tea and cookies, pleased to chat with a youngster about events beyond her walls.

One day, she told me we’d have to ‘stop meeting like this,’ because a nasty rumor about us being alone together was circulating. Embarrassed, she said, “No more tea parties for us.” I felt angry that we were unjustly accused of impropriety—likely due to idle gossip.

*

Another pensioner, whom I visited almost daily, was a former horse jockey who suffered frequent blackouts. After a racing tumble, a metal plate had been embedded in his skull, leaving him prone to sudden fainting spells. Crossing the street had become an ordeal of terror, in his fear that he might collapse amid rush traffic and be run over. I tried to imagine the dread of standing at a corner, mustering the courage to step off the curb.

We had many long talks and shared key events of our lives. I listened as he told stories of World War II, during which he earned a Purple Heart. Having gained his trust, I remember the day he said, quietly, “I went to war for people like you.”

I was deeply moved. When he died shortly after, I prayed for the repose of his soul at his funeral Mass. I was hidden far in the back of the church.

Cloaked in shadows, avoiding the family mourners kneeling near the coffin, my prayerful petition remained a private affair. I found myself transposing his words into what Christ might have said: “I carried my cross, suffered much, and died for people like you.”

As I sat in the pew, tears welled in my eyes.

I had befriended Christ in this veteran.

IFrom the memoir-in-progress, nearing publication:
Path Perilous: My Search for God and the Miraculous
—a spiritual epic for truth-seekers, contemplative mystics, and all who long for God.

Visit www.RMDellOrfanoAuthor.com and pass it forward.