One Really Good Now

 

My brother Don, would be eighty this month. Sadly, he died at the age of twenty in 1965, the same year that our father was also facing his own early death.

When Don was born, I was 21 months old, and called him “Don Doll.” I have always loved him. Don grew to be a young man of many interests and questions and lived life to the fullest, whether it be in Boy Scouts, hiking mountains, creating a seventh-grade science fair experiment, building a pram with our father, or just doubling us over with his exquisite sense of humor.

When Don was in high school, he applied for a summer job as a technician in the Microbiology lab at The University of Washington. A technician called back to say that she could use him, but he would only be washing test tubes and cleaning the lab. His response was, “That’s great! That’s all I would be qualified to do.”

That job turned into many summers, after-school, and every weekend, almost a full-time job for a full-time student. Microbiology was the field that drew his heart and mind. Working with a generous professor, Don was invited to co-author a professional article in the journal Virology, when he was just eighteen. This was entitled: Evidence for Cytoplasmic Replication of Poliovirus Ribonucleic Acid,  not something I can understand. He then majored in Microbiology at the University and spent much of his time in the lab, learning and contributing more than the classes themselves offered.

In May, just before he turned twenty, he popped home for dinner one night, and after what seemed like delightful old times bantering with his brothers, after they had been excused, he showed our parents a lump on his leg. Both medical professionals, they were alarmed and had it medically evaluated immediately. A doctor diagnosed it as a torn muscle. But it grew. Within a few weeks, it had alarmingly increased in size so that a second biopsy was done, and this indicated cancer. Radiology showed that cancer had spread to is lungs within those few weeks. Then began chemo, radiation, and violent side-effects that they caused in those days.

That summer, Don tenaciously held to the fullness of his life, work, school, and girlfriend, all the while vomiting and coughing. He knew he would die. I remember the soft, summer Seattle afternoon when we learned through the diagnosis that he had but a few months to live. I remember his long lean frame draped across the living room-sofa catching a moment of peace before he began to react once again to the chemo. I remember watching him lie there listening to Glen Yarborough’s song, “Baby the Rain Must Fall.” He knew.

I remember watching him drive his little red MGB. I remember him continuing to love his girlfriend, to do research, to walk, and to learn. I remember one night when the other five of us in the family were settled into bed, and Don came home late. As I heard his footsteps going down the wooden stairs to his basement room, I reflected, “We are all safe at home now. I wonder how many other nights we will all be together.” (Not many). Through hospitalizations and set-backs, Don never let go. He claimed his life; he treasured his life; he offered his life to those around him; he lived his life abundantly. And still, he knew he would soon die.

And he did die, but he also didn’t die. As of  this year, a total of sixty Microbiology Juniors at the University of Washington have lived his dreams forward with their lives, financially helped through the Don Bassett Microbiology Scholarship.

Watching Don live into his death, I remember myself saying, “Even if he lived until he were eighty, he could never live a life of greater fullness than these weeks that he is living right now. For what is time? Clearly not of the clock but of God.”

I have just finished reading Fredrik Backman’s new book, My Friends, in which one of the quirky characters co-incidentally says, “It didn’t matter if  we lived to be eighty-years-old, because that’s only a billion different nows, and one really good now is enough.”

Don lived “one really good now.” And that is enough. He is eighty.

I will always love you, “Don Doll.”

 

Baby the Rain Must Fall

https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=Yarborough+Baby+the+Rain+Must+Fall&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:f09997c7,vid:NnoM51njVBI,st:0

 

Baby the Rain Must Fall by Glen Yarborough

Some men climb a mountain
Some men swim the sea
Some men fly above the sky
They are what they must be.

But, baby the rain must fall
Baby, the wind must blow
Wherever my heart leads me
Baby, I must go
Baby, I must go.

I do not love for silver
I do not love for gold
My heart is mine to give away
It never will be sold

So, baby the rain must fall
Baby, the wind must blow
Wherever my heart leads me
Baby, I must go
Baby, I must go

I am not rich or famous
But who can ever tell
I don’t know now what waits for me
Maybe heaven, maybe hell

Baby, the rain must fall
Baby, the wind must blow
Wherever my heart leads me
Baby, I must go
Baby, I must go