Alex

by Frank Deford

  Right away it came to me; thirteens. Double thirteens are coming up. The raven, now this. Alex will die when this machine reaches 1313 hours. I calculated that to be around two-thirty in the afternoon.

  Both our ministers came. Father Kennedy was heading out of town for the day, but he dropped in and spoke to Alex and said a prayer. Later, Father Shipman, the assistant pastor, came by. He arrived about half-past twelve, and although Alex had declined markedly, she managed to ask Father Shipman a question. “Do you have to die to see God?” she said.

  I don’t think he was quite prepared for that. I know I wasn’t. But he gathered himself and said, no, you didn’t have to die to see God, because you could see Him all around, in all that He had created in this world—the birds and the animals and the trees and the flowers, everything.

  Alex thanked him, and I could even see her smile at the thought of all those pretty things she loved. It was a good answer. On the other hand, after Father Shipman left, I got to thinking that it really wasn’t fair for a child who was dying only to hear about God in terms of the things that living people see. I reopened the subject, and I said that although none of us—not even a minister, not even Father Shipman—knows exactly what God in His heaven looks like, it is unquestionably a much more beautiful place than earth. I said this was one of the advantages of dying.

  “I don’t want to die today,” Alex said then. She wasn’t being difficult. She knew she was going to die. She just said she didn’t want to die today.

  Carol said, “You know, Alex, when you die, you can see God and talk to Him and tell Him all about us. And we’ll always be together, all four of us, because you’ll keep an eye on us, and then we’ll meet again in Heaven.”

  Alex took that all in, turning it over in her mind. She understood perfectly, but still, right to the last I suppose, she didn’t want to absolutely, completely admit the whole truth. She would die with one wish—the real one—outstanding.

  And then, as the day wore on, as the last of her life got away from her, Alex spoke less and less of anything. She was often uncomfortable and occasionally there were moments of unbearable agony, but they were brief, thank God, and never again did she suffer sustained periods of great pain, as she had the night before. Still, increasingly, it was difficult for her to make the effort to talk, and so mostly she only listened.

  Carol took charge. She began to review Alex’s life. I joined in. We never orchestrated this; we never plotted it. It just came naturally. After that we only really talked with Alex of two things: her life, and what we could guess of death. It didn’t seem to be the time for small talk, when your child was dying.

  So we brought up as many people as Alex knew and loved that we could recall. We talked of the things she had done with them, and of the joys she had given them, and they her. We talked of all the places she had been and of all the wonderful things we had done together. We talked about her school and about her room and her house and Chaucer and Buffalo and we even talked about the hospital and all her friends there. We talked about all the things Alex liked. What was her favorite song of all? She gave that some serious consideration and finally decided that it was “I Don’t Wanna Play House,” by Tammy Wynette. I went downstairs and found it and put it on her record player. Then we talked about the Broadway shows she had seen, and Benny Hill, who made her laugh, and all the dancing that she loved. Well, what we talked about was love. Love, love, love, Alex. We kept saying it.

  And then we talked some about Heaven, too, about God and souls and angels. Carol told Alex that angels didn’t have cystic fibrosis, they didn’t even have touches of arthritis, so they could dance and play among the clouds in Heaven, all day, every day, and Alex smiled and managed to say yes, she already knew that, that she even had it on good authority that some angels wore tutus.

  “Tutus!” said Carol. “Why some angels wear tutus just like that shiny one you have with all the sequins.”

  “Really?” Alex managed to say.

  “Oh yeah. Angels can get whatever kinds of tutus they want.”

  Alex nodded and smiled. “Mother?” she said.

  “Yes?”

  “What about wings?”

  “Well, all angels have wings.”

  “I mean, will I get mine right away?”

  “The first day,” Carol said. “And then you can always be our guardian angel and watch over us.”

  And once more Alex smiled at us. But soon, again, those bursts of pain in her chest began to strike her, and she rose up from where she lay, her head on Tink, crying out to us. So often we had heard this, but now it seemed even more anguished, more shrill, perhaps, I suppose, because Alex was afraid that this time the pain would also include death in the bad bargain.

  But each time the pain would subside, the great pain, and she would lie forward, where she was most comfortable, her head upon my chest. And one time, a little after one o’clock, when Alex leaned on me, she said, “Which way do I go?”—meaning, what’s the best way for me to place my head? But it tore me up, the unintentional imagery. Such an ironic thing for someone to say in the face of death: Which way do I go?

  And I chose to take the more obtuse meaning, and replied that way, “Any way you and God think is best, Alex.”

  She went along. “And Jesus too, Daddy?”

  “Oh yeah, Him too. The three of you guys.”

  She smiled. But not long after that Alex became almost completely passive. That was the only way for her to go. When her brother came by again to see her around two o’clock, she forced her eyes open as soon as she heard him coming up the stairs, and that was when she said, for the last time, “I love you, Chrish.”

  That slight effort, to turn and speak, cost her so much, though, that when, shortly afterward, she wanted another sip of root beer, she could ask for it only by turning her head toward the glass and signaling for it with her eyes. Carol held the straw to her lips, and Alex managed a sip. And for thanks, one more smile. That was her last smile. She wasn’t ever able again to muster a smile. Finally, the cystic fibrosis had even taken the smiles out of Alex. It was that mad at her. Every conceivable effort had to be given over to breathing. She was so worn down, poor thing. Carol and I held her, first the one of us, then the other. We kept telling Alex about love. That constituted the conversation.

  About twenty past two the hour counter on the back of the oxygen compressor turned to 1313. About a half-hour later Alex suddenly shot up. There was no cry this time, no energy left for that, but instead, there was upon her little face such a shocked expression, her eyes so full and wide, that both Carol and I were sure that this must be the end.

  I believe it was meant to be, too. But something held Alex with us for just a little more. She had never wanted to be left out of anything, and yet she was robbed of so much of life, so I think she was at least determined, as much as was possible, to see what it would be like when she died. She found out it was like this: She fell onto my chest, and Carol clutched her hands and told her how much we loved her and always would. So that is how I die: in my father’s arms, my mother holding my hands. That is how. So Alex knew now. In time she lay back on Tink.

  She just lay there, and I reached under her gown and rubbed her back. Oh, God, the backbone stuck out so. Skin and bones. That was all that cystic fibrosis had left of her now. We talked more of love. That constituted the conversation, love.

  A few minutes passed. There was nothing Carol and I could tell each other, even with our eyes. We were quiet now. Suddenly, Alex bolted up again. I would have known, without any doubt, that this was death, in all its power, but there had been the false alarm shortly before. Alex fell forward on my chest, her little body tumbling over my right leg that was crooked up on the bed. Carol took her hands once again, and, exactly as before, she told her how much we loved her and what a wonderful person she was.

  And this time Alex raised up and away from me, but slowly, with purpose, not jerked by any pain or any forces but her own, until she wa
s almost fully sitting up, somehow supporting herself, and she looked directly at us, her eyes shifting from her mother to her father, so that both of us felt them boring into us.

  I’m sorry, but this is how a child dies.

  I can see those eyes, this moment, still. I see them constantly. But I could never describe them properly for what they meant, what they told. They were just absolutely wide open, so that even in death a little light could come in, and what they seemed to say was: Can you believe it, Daddy? Can you believe it, Mother? It’s really happening. Right now. Right now, I die.

  Oh, and how they also seemed to call to us with such unbelievable love.

  And, at that, still just as open, they were also blank. The life had floated away, free. Alex’s body stayed up for an instant or two more, but she was already up there with God. Imagine being eight years old and dead.

  And then her little body, the skin and bones, tumbled over onto my right leg, and all this vile mucus, all this yukky that had hurt her and killed her, over all her years, all that began to ooze out of her mouth onto me. Oh, I was so glad. Even if it was too late to matter, I wanted that evil poison out of her. “Oh, Carol, she’s died, thank God,” I said.

  Carol said, “Remember, she may still be here in this room. She may still hear us.”

  And so we both said, I love you, Alex, louder and louder, over and over, so that even if angels chattered she could not help but hear us over them.

  Gently then I laid Alex down by her Tink, not on him, as she had come to use him in pain, but next to him, as a child should be with her favorite toy animal. Carol drew her eyes shut and cleaned her off. Most all of the yukky had poured on me, so I took off my turtleneck, took off my pants, and there, in my underpants and socks, I got down on my knees by the bed where Alex had just died, and I thanked God for taking her out of the pain she had always known, till now.

  I put on some new clothes while Carol tended to our little child. Alex looked so comfortable all of a sudden. Maybe that was why, for the first time, I actually understood that I was hearing the compressor. And now it didn’t have any business intruding, making all that noise. So I went over and turned the damn thing off. I also looked to see the figures in the back. The register read 1313.9. Five more minutes and the double thirteens would have been past.

  I went downstairs and phoned Dmitri’s house and told them to bring Chris right over. Of course, this time he knew exactly what had happened, and he was crying when he stepped into the house. “Alex just died, Chrish,” I said, pronouncing his name like that, just as she always did.

  Then he went up to see her. He was crying so hard. He went over, and he kissed his sister, and he told us that she was already getting cold. That was true. But I’ll tell you something else. There was more sweet life to her face then than ever there had been in the last long grasp of her disease, the one they never found a cure for.

  “Alex was something, Chris,” I said. “Your sister was some piece of work for this earth.”

  “I’ll never forget her. I promise. I won’t ever.” He studied her, there on her bed, where he had always slept with her. “I’d just like to keep her here forever, in a glass box, so I could always see her.”

  And then Carol and I left the room because Chris asked if he couldn’t be alone with Alex for a while.

  And that was how my baby girl died, of a long illness, at three-fifteen in the afternoon of Saturday, January 19, 1980. She lived with us almost ninety-nine months, just short of three thousand days. She was dear and noble, and nothing ever controlled her.

  Chapter 25

  We buried Alex three days later, Tuesday morning, January 22. For pallbearers, we chose men who represented various important elements in her life: Wendy’s father, the custodian at her school; two of the officers from the Association of Tennis Professionals; uncles from either side of the family; her doctor—people like that.

  There were many children present in the church, and it was a lovely short service. Father Shipman praised Alex, he read some of Malcolm Boyd’s prayer for her, and we sang “I Sing a Song of the Saints of God” and “Jesus Tender Shepherd, Hear Me,” and then, at another point, Joan McFarland rose in the balcony and sang “Morning Has Broken.”

  It was a gray day, Tuesday. It was not at all like the Saturday Alex had died, when the sky was blue. It had grown colder too, and on the way to the cemetery from the church, some flurries began to scatter in the air. This was the first snow we had seen in weeks. It was the first snow in 1980. During the service at the grave, the flurries turned into real snow—they became big, huge snowflakes. They were so big they looked like lace, and it snowed like that all during the service, while Alex was lowered into the ground.

  About two minutes after Father Kennedy ended the service and I dropped a pink rose on the coffin, it stopped snowing. Just like that. And it didn’t snow again for weeks more. It was as if God had been crying for all of us. That’s what I think, anyway.

  About the Author

  Frank Deford was an author, commentator, and senior contributor to Sports Illustrated. In addition, he was a correspondent for HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel and a regular Wednesday commentator for National Public Radio’s Morning Edition. He won both an Emmy and a Peabody Award for his broadcasting.

  Deford’s 1981 novel Everybody’s All-American was named one of Sports Illustrated’s Top 25 Sports Books of All Time and was later made into a movie directed by Taylor Hackford and starring Dennis Quaid. His memoir Alex: The Life of a Child, chronicling his daughter’s life and battle with cystic fibrosis, was made into a movie starring Craig T. Nelson and Bonnie Bedelia in 1986.

  In 2012 President Obama honored Deford with the National Humanities Medal for “transforming how we think about sports,” making Deford the first person primarily associated with sports to earn recognition from the National Endowment for the Humanities. He was also awarded the PEN/ESPN Lifetime Achievement Award for Literary Sportswriting, the W.M. Kiplinger Distinguished Contributions to Journalism Award, and the Associated Press Sports Editors’ Red Smith Award, and was elected to the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters of America Hall of Fame. GQ has called him, simply, “the world’s greatest sportswriter.”

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  Copyright © 1983 by Frank Deford

  Cover design by Gabriela Sahagun

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-0733-7

  This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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