My Father Was Dying in the Hospital. Then Another Patient Changed Everything.

When it came time to take my dad off of life support, I felt completely helpless. Then a perfect stranger made a heartbreaking situation slightly more bearable.

I got a call from my sister that my dad had taken a turn for the worse, and I needed to get home right away. I wasn’t ready for that. When I got to the hospital, he had already slipped into a coma. I had missed all the dramatic goodbyes that were said because everyone knew he was not gonna make it. So that was upsetting.

He was in a coma for a while. It was that weird place where everybody is connected by this thing and it’s killing us. After two weeks, I brought up the idea that maybe we should pull the plug. I don’t know where that saying comes from, ’cause nobody pulls a plug. Everybody stays plugged in.

But it was time. We all knew. I thought it would happen like on Days of Our Lives. I thought you would pull the plug, and there’d be a lot of crying for ten to 15 minutes, and then the person would pass, and you would be sad, but it would be over.

Instead, we waited for four, then five, hours. And you wanted to scream, ’cause it’s crazy. Right in the middle of this, they wheel another woman into our room, a woman who had just had heart surgery. I remember thinking, That’s not a good idea. My dad is dying. Why are you bringing in a woman who’s had heart surgery? That doesn’t make any sense. It’s bad management.

The woman was on a lot of medication and saying crazy things. She’s 80 and naked and kicking her covers off. I’m on this side of the room, with a curtain that is not very soundproof, sitting by my dad, saying, “I love you, Dad. I’m really going to miss you.”

From the other side, we hear, “Cinnamon.”

“You were such a great dad to me.”

“Cinnamon.”

“Dad, you were wonderful—”

“Cinnamon.”

Finally, you can’t help laughing, because your life is exploding in front of your eyes, and it’s that moment where you’re crying and laughing. Then my husband says, “Thirty ccs of cinnamon, stat!” It killed me, and we all stopped crying for a moment and laughed really hard.

Four hours later, the nurse says, “It’s probably time. His heart rate is lowering.” We are holding his hand, and she says, “Maybe if you tell him it’s OK to go, he’ll go.”

So we all say, “Daddy, it’s OK” and “We love you,” and my mom says, “John, you were such a great dad, and I love you, and it’s OK, I’ll take care of the girls.” And across the room from the old lady in the bed, we hear, “Don’t go, John.”

Yeah.

And I remember thinking, That’s what I feel. That was what was inside me. I think I gave that woman my words: “Don’t go, John. Don’t go.”

But he did. I had my hand on his chest and his heart stopped.

Later, we found out Cinnamon Lady—that’s what I call her, Cinnamon Lady—didn’t have anyone in her life named John. I thought, Wow, that’s crazy. But we also learned she was a baker. So we understood the cinnamon part.

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‘Sesame Street’ Nearly Killed Our Son With Autism

A parent recounts a harrowing tale about raising a child with an obsessive mind.

Our oldest son, Sam, has autism and Tourette’s, with powerful obsessions and compulsions. Some were episodic, one-time things that he had to do and had to do now, like go over the barrier at the zoo’s gorilla enclosure. Climb over the fence on the edge of a 200-foot fall into Lake Superior. Wander off at sunset in the Porcupine Mountains.

Others were more periodic, things he had to do every single day for a period of six months, a year, a year and a half. Some were harmless, like the year he wore a Band-Aid on his face every single day. And some were a little more frightening, like the stretch when he had to run out and touch the yellow line in the road with his finger to a count of four.

You couldn’t stop him. He could take off while I was cooking dinner or we were all asleep. The best you could do was to try to protect him. His obsessions and compulsions were like an itch that, if he didn’t scratch it, just grew and grew. We’d survived each episode with no casualties. But when he was about eight years old, there was one that I misunderstood.

Sammy was compulsively removing the wire ties that connected our chain link fence to the upright supports and top bar. He was using his little fingers to wiggle the ties back and forth to get them loose. It was taking him forever, but he was working his way down the fence. I’d go out at night regularly with my pliers, and I’d put them all back on.

Sam is not our only child. Over the years, my wife and I have raised 17 children. At the time, we had five other children, so I’d fallen behind. One day, I looked out the back window, and I saw the fence between our house and the neighbor’s house lying flat in the grass. Over by the power lines was Sammy with a wobbling 20-foot-long pole.

We’ve learned over the years that you can’t panic, you can’t yell. That only makes a bad situation worse. So I said, “Sammy, let me have the pole. Give Papa the pole, Sammy.”

Before I could get ahold of it, he swings it. Wham! Wham! You know that gray cylindrical box attached to a utility pole where the power line goes in? He hits it hard, and as he hits it, he yells, “Oscar! Come outta you can! Come outta you garbage can, Oscar!”

He thought the transformer was Oscar’s garbage can from Sesame Street. I had thought his compulsion was bending those wires, but no—it had a singular purpose.

I said, “Sammy, Oscar doesn’t live up there. Oscar lives on the ground.”

“He live on the ground?”

“Yes, he lives on the ground.” Then I said, “If you hit that, you could die.”

“I could die?”

“You could die.”

“I could die?”

“Yes, you could die.”

So 45 minutes later, I’ve persuaded him to come inside and see the Sesame Street video and show him that Oscar does indeed live on the ground.

But I’m not foolish enough to think I’ve talked him out of his compulsion. So I run to the fencing store and buy three big bundles of those wire ties.

Navigating Sammy’s diagnoses over the past 20-some years has taught my family to appreciate the little things.

My wife summed it up beautifully on one of our family camping trips. We were sitting around the fire having a well-deserved nightcap in our little tin cups. She looked up at me and said, “Honey, it was a good day. No fatalities.”

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I Thought a Stranger Was Going to Rob Us on Vacation. What He Did Next Changed My Heart.

Never judge someone by their appearance.

Six years ago, my wife, Liz, and I celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary. It was a lovely event hosted by our four sons and their families. Many wonderful friends from the past surprised us with best wishes and congratulations.

Our gift to each other was an extended driving trip out west. We drove from Ontario through Manitoba, Saskatchewan and into Alberta, then southward into Glacier National Park in Montana. We continued to Red Lodge, which is the gateway to Yellowstone National Park. It was late spring, and the esteemed Beartooth Highway had opened for the season just weeks before.

There was a great amount of snow remaining alongside the road. The scenery was so impressive that we made numerous stops to record memories with my camera. At roughly the highest point of the highway, we stopped at a lookout so I could capture the amazing vistas, with my wife in the center of my camera lens.

Occasionally vehicles passed by, and at one point we heard a motorcycle in the distance. The driver parked behind our vehicle. As he strode toward us, his only words were, “Give me your camera and get over there with your wife.”

I must sheepishly admit I felt nervous that we might be robbed. He took a picture of us, handed back my camera and rode off amid my awkward mumblings of gratitude. The photo he took is one of the most cherished and prized of our trip.

There is a Bible verse that says man judges by outward appearance, but God judges us by our heart. Should the wonderful gentleman who gave us this memory recognize the circumstances, we would again like to say a heartfelt thank you.

And I’ve learned my lesson not to judge others on their appearances.

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The Best Love Letter I Ever Got Came From a Near-Deaf Crime Reporter

In this true tale from the Moth, America's premier storytelling group, a woman recalls a humorous story from her early days as a journalist.

My first real job at the Miami Herald was the graveyard shift on the police beat. I was a chubby, overprotected Cuban girl from Kendall who had managed to Forrest Gump her way into a really cool job, and I spent the whole first year feeling I was on shaky ground.

They sat me next to two veteran crime reporters at the newspaper. On one side was Elaine de Valle, brash and bold. She was often screaming into her phone in Spanish, as if she were being burned at the stake by Fidel Castro. She had passion!

On the other side was Arnold Markowitz, Arnie, or Witz, if he really, really liked you. He was wild, with a shock of white hair and this white beard that he would claw in frustration if someone was being especially dumb or stupid. I was frequently both.

Because Arnie was hard of hearing, he rigged up his desk phone to a bright white light, like the kind of thing a tugboat would need to navigate foggy conditions. So every time the phone would ring, the light would flash and Arnie would pick up the phone and scream, “Markowitz! What you got?” It was terrifying, but he was a legend: unstoppable, un-scoopable. Every criminal and cop knew him, and I was determined to impress him.

That first summer, Arnie gets a call, a tip that there was a break in a cold case he had covered years ago. There was a guy who had disappeared on the way to a casino at the edge of the Everglades. Arnie gets a tip that they found his car at the bottom of a canal.

He sends me to the crime scene to see if they pulled any remains from the submerged car. I drive out to Homestead in the middle of the night, in the middle of a thunderstorm.

Somehow, I manage to talk my way onto the crime scene. I’m standing there, ankle deep in mud, and they’re winching up this old sedan, and one of the cops opens the door, and sure enough, it’s a tangle of bones and muck and weeds. Did I mention the bones?

So I scribble in my notebook and get the heck out of there because by now it’s ten minutes to deadline, and I have to call Arnie to file my feed.

Only my phone is dead, of course. So I’m driving in a blind panic in the rain, completely unhinged, praying for a pay phone. Then I see a Denny’s, like Valhalla in the distance, a Denny’s with a pay phone in front of it!

I screech like a maniac. I jump out of the car and run for the pay phone, and I notice, out of the corner of my eye, a group of potheads just kind of hanging out outside the Denny’s like potheads do. But I don’t even pay attention to them. I throw my coins in the phone and call Arnie.

He picks up. “Markowitz! What you got?” And I tell him everything: the car, the canal, the bones. And because Arnie’s hard of hearing, I have to yell all this at the top of my lungs.

So if you happened to be one of those potheads at that Denny’s on that dark and stormy night, this is what you would have seen: a chubby Cuban girl from Kendall, her legs caked in mud, her eyes streaked with rain and tears and mascara, wailing into a pay phone, “They found his bones but not a skull! His bones! In the car. They found the bones!”

I like to think that years later, those guys in the parking lot still talk about me:

“Bro, remember that girl at Denny’s?”

“Yeah, bro. She totally murdered someone. Right?”

The next day at work, I get to my desk, and there’s a note on the keyboard that says, simply, “Figueras, welcome to the craft,” signed, “Witz.”

Apologies to my husband in the back, but it was the best love letter a man has ever written me.

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A Harvard Professor Asks: How Do You Teach Patriotism to 9-Year-Olds?

It’s a Saturday morning, and I am eager to fly away. My husband and I will meet up with our son on the other side of the country to learn and explore together. Sitting now at the airport gate, my husband wanders away to stretch his legs. Moments later, he returns and whispers in my ear. I rise and follow him around the corner toward a large window facing the landing area. A crowd, solemn and still, gathers at the window and gazes out.

Now I am one of those peering in silence. On the tarmac, Marines stand straight and tall in formation, the plane door open, a ramp waiting. A white hearse is parked nearby. A man and a soldier stand on either side of a woman, supporting her, waiting for what is to come, for a sight she must surely have hoped and prayed never to see.

The ramp begins to move, and a flag-draped casket starts its descent. Airport personnel stand in reverent stillness. A few place their hands over their hearts, as I have done. We’re joined in witness, sending love to an honorable soldier whose name we’ll never know.

The woman’s face is contorted in pain as she wails in the way only a mother can, though her cries are unheard by those of us on the other side of the window. She collapses, knowing she will never again hear “Mom” from her son’s lips. She’ll never feel his loving arms encircle her shoulders or relish his sweet peck on her cheeks.

Another face, that of a square-jawed man, grimaces in pain, weakened by grief. The father holds his head in his hands and turns it back and forth, a refusal to accept this new reality. His son, the tiny boy he no doubt wrestled playfully, the teen he probably taught to drive, the son he stood so proudly by as he donned his Marine uniform, now lives only in his memory.

Those behind the glass stay silent, reflecting on this life, this loss, as the family and soldiers depart the runway. A dozen of us women, with red-rimmed eyes and tear-stained cheeks, move slowly away, dabbing our faces and sharing a mother’s profound grief.

Soon, each of us will fly off in planes and return to an ordinary life made extraordinary by this soldier’s courage, by this family’s sacrifice, and by this love shared by all who look out the window and know.

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Why I Left Flowers On a Stranger’s Grave in Russia

In this true tale from the Moth, America's premier storytelling group, a man explains a grave predicament he encountered abroad.

Last summer, after 16 years in the United States, I traveled to the city in Russia where I grew up. I was the first in my family to return after all those years. My mom gave me a hand-drawn map showing the location of my grandfather’s grave at the local cemetery, and she asked me to visit it.
When I was leaving, she asked me again.

“Are you going to go there?”
“Yes.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”

It was really important to her that I go there. My grandfather died when I was little, and she wanted me to remember him. She would tell me stories about him. He was still very much alive in her mind, and she wanted him to continue to live in my mind as well.

But I was just too little when it all happened, so I didn’t remember much. I thought maybe this visit to his grave would make up for what she thought was her failure at keeping his memory alive.

So I promised that the first thing I’d do when I arrived would be to visit the cemetery. Well, the first thing I did when I got there was to locate my high school girlfriend.

And I got caught up in work, and I had a lot of catching up to do with my childhood friends. So it wasn’t until a day before I was leaving that I found time to go to the cemetery.

It was late in the afternoon, and right by the entrance was a lady who was selling flowers. By then she had only seven carnations left in her bucket. I bought them all, but when I reached for my wallet, I realized I didn’t have the map with me. I had no idea what had happened to that map. And I had no idea where my grandfather’s grave was located.

I could call my mom and ask her. There was a pay phone right there, and I still had ten or 15 minutes left on my calling card, and it was already morning in New York.

But the problem was that I had already told her I’d gone to the cemetery. What was I going to say? That I decided to go again but lost the map? She knows whom she’s dealing with. She’d see right through me.

So I found the main office. It actually occupied a family mausoleum. I figured some affluent family must have commissioned it but then had immigrated to the United States, and the management took advantage of the situation and moved right in.

Fortunately it was open, and inside was a small office filled with file cabinets. It looked like a financial aid office at some community college. Behind the counter was an old woman, and she said she’d help me locate my grandfather’s records.

A couple of minutes later, she came back with a printout. I was going to reach for it, but she said, “No, no; let me see it first. It’s five dollars per grave.”
I said, “Well, is there more than one?”
“Yes. There’s always more than one.”

It turned out there were 17 Abraham Pikarskis on the list. I paid for the two whose age I believed closely matched my grandfather’s.

I set off to look for them. I hoped that at least one would have a portrait on the tombstone. It is the custom with Russian immigrants here in New York to put portraits on tombstones. This way I’d know which grave was mine.

I found the first grave and it said Abraham Pikarski on it, but there was no portrait. Only an inscription: From the Loving Wife and Children.

I had no idea whether this was the right one, so I went off to look for the other one. I found it, too, and it was virtually indistinguishable from the first one. Even the granite was the same color. It said Abraham Pikarski, no portrait. The inscription was slightly different. It said: From the Grieving Family.

I had no idea what to do. Was my family the loving one or the grieving one? I was standing there waiting, thinking maybe some sort of special feeling would come to me. Maybe I’d feel some sort of kinship with the person who was lying there.

I tried to remember all I knew about my grandfather. He was a locksmith. He was a father of three. He was a soccer fan. He died of a heart attack.

I put three carnations on that grave, and I went back to the first one. I stood there, too, for a while, and again I was hoping that I’d feel something special. But it was getting late, and I remembered that I had yet to pack for the trip back to New York, so I put three carnations on this grave.

I stood there with the last flower in my hand. Which Abraham Pikarski should it go to? Should I just discard it? Should I take a flower from another grave and make sure that each Abraham Pikarski got an equal number of flowers?

I had to come up with some sort of a formula.

Then, suddenly, I knew what to do. I put that flower on that same grave where I was standing. I thought if this is really my grandfather who is lying there, then all is well and good, and he got the most. But if not, then let this be a consolation to the stranger, because somebody else’s grandson came all the way from America to pay his respects.

I went back to the hotel and flew home to New York the next day. I never found that map again.

Mom and Dad picked me up at the airport. They have this thing about picking me up at airports. Really, I would have been home at least an hour sooner if it weren’t for them. First they couldn’t find the parking lot, then they went to look for me at the wrong terminal, then they lost each other. Finally I found them, and on the way home from the airport, my mom started crying.

I asked, “Mom, why are you crying? It’s only been a week.”

She said, “I’m just so happy that you took the time to visit your grandfather’s grave. It really means so much to me. You know when you called and told me you went there, I thought you were just saying it to make me feel good.”

When I was still in the air this morning, her second cousin who lives in Russia had called and told my mother that she had just come from the cemetery and had seen my flowers there. So my mom knew that I had really done this. And she stopped crying, and she was sitting there, and she was wiping her eyes.

And I thought: Should I ask her how many flowers her second cousin saw? Three or four?

But then I decided that maybe I should not say anything at all.

Reader’s Digest is proud to partner with the Moth on storytelling “Grand Slam” events in many cities across the country, with the best stories appearing in the July/August issue of RD.

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