Community, Part Two

©2017 by John LaTorre

In my last blog post, I talked about a few of the communities I’ve been associated with over the years. I was recently reminded of another one. It was one that Albert Schweitzer, the physician and philanthropist, called “the Fellowship of Those Who Bear the Mark of Pain.”

He saw the members of that fellowship daily in his hospital in Africa, and wrote about it in his book On the Edge of the Primeval Forest:

“Who are the members of this fellowship? Those who have learned by experience what physical pain and bodily anguish mean, belong together all the world over; they are united by a secret bond. One and all they know the horrors of suffering to which man can be exposed, and one and all they know the longing to be free from pain. He who has been delivered from pain must not think he is now free again, and at liberty to take life up just as it was before, entirely forgetful of the past.”

I became a member of that fellowship on March 31, 1965, when I was hit by a car. I broke both thigh-bones and went in and out of consciousness over the next couple of days. (I’ll spare you any details of what caused the pain; let me say only that it made me faint after only a few minutes of wakefulness, and that the unconsciousness proved to be a blessing.) I was to spend the next ten weeks in traction, another six weeks in a body cast, and then another two weeks in traction. I was eventually able to walk normally again and even achieve a sort of shambling run for a few steps, but there hasn’t been a time, from that day to this, when I haven’t been in at least a small degree of pain.

Dr. Schweitzer was right about pain leaving a mark on people. Even when the acute pain is gone, your behavior is changed, and you can no longer look upon others in pain without understanding what they are going through. The more chronic the pain is, the longer lasting are the effects. I can sometimes tell when a person is in pain from a look in their eyes or a certain carefulness in their motions. In them, I see myself.

But this fellowship is more than one of shared experience, and Dr. Schweitzer knew that. He continues:

“He is now a ‘man whose eyes are open’ with regard to pain and anguish, and he must help to overcome those two enemies (so far as human power can control them) and to bring to others the deliverance which he has himself enjoyed.”

I saw this myself in the Army hospital where I recuperated. They used to set up a sixteen-millimeter projector and a screen and show movies in the hallway of the orthopedic ward. Some of my fellow patients helped the orderlies roll my bed, and those of other bed-ridden patients, out of the room and into the hall so I could see the movies, too. And there was a large auditorium at the hospital, two floors below my ward, which showed first-run pictures for the hospital staff and patients. For these shows, my fellow patients would load me onto a freight elevator, bed and all, and take me to the auditorium, which had a large open space for hospital beds like mine. We’d watch the movie, and then they would wheel me back to the elevator and return me to my room. The important thing is that my friends were ordinary GIs with the same blue pajamas that all the patients wore. They didn’t know me, and I didn’t know them. With their arms in slings, or their hand in bandages, they navigated my bed down hallways and into elevators, with no thought of recompense.

What motivated them? I think Dr. Schweitzer hit on the answer: in my situation, they saw a bit of their own situation. In their pain, they sought to relieve a little of mine. And in this way—so small to them, but so big to me—they demonstrated Dr. Schweitzer’s conviction that this fellowship existed. I never learned their names, but I’m grateful to them, even at the interval of half a century. If you happen to be one of those people, and you’re ever in Sacramento, I’ll be glad to buy you a beer at the tavern of your choice.