The End of Our Baltimore Stay

Something did inspire me, but not at midnight. I thought about it before I got up this morning. I would do another series and tell you about Phil. He was our youngest child of four, always slender, grew to six feet, two inches tall, and had red hair and blue eyes like Grandmother Lindsley, our only blue-eyed child. (Susan’s eyes were green, like her father’s, and the two middle boys have brown eyes, like me.)

Phil was sometimes called “an encyclopedia of sports.” When he wasn’t playing a game outside, he created board games for inside. At his last Christmas we gave him an electronic chess set for one player. He wasn’t able to work it much, for on January 2, he died at age 19. This happened at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore at 3:33 in the morning.

I didn’t know it then, but learned soon afterwards, most people who die natural deaths, do so around 3:00 in the morning. If you’re ever awake at 3:00 a. m., and not loaded up with drugs, you can be confused as to whether it’s yesterday or tomorrow. Hold on. “Today” is not the correct answer. Just try it sometime when you’re not thinking about it.

Phil’s father, his sister, and his brother Mike, and I were with Phil as he died. When he had expired, the lady doctor said, “Well, that’s that.” I thought it a terrible thing to say, but proceeded to ask if a noise we’d heard was a death rattle. She said, “Yes.”

Mike, who had a wife and three-months-old baby boy back home, prepared to leave Baltimore immediately. He took Phil’s chess set with him and I didn’t know till years later he didn’t even remember taking it. Someone, somewhere, found a wonderful belated Christmas present. I hope they enjoyed it.

While John spent more time with the head doctor in Oncology, Dr. Santos, making arrangements for the autopsy (which Phil had agreed to when he first got there) and flying the body home, Susan and I returned, by hospital security car, to our hotel, The Sheraton, across the street but still a few blocks away. The car was for our protection for the hospital was located in a high-crime area. Susan called the airport to make our reservations for us three, and to up the grade to first class. We were exhausted and heart-broken and did not relish the idea of riding coach. Tomorrow we will go back two and a half years.

♥♥♥