I use the word love I run the risk of ambiguity and confusion, for in most of our modern languages, and most certainly in English, love refers only to romantic love. Such love was not absent from Dr. Frieder's life, as those of you aware of his lifelong devotion to his beloved wife, Simone, know so well. But the love that motivated his life work was the same kind of love that led God to create the universe, ... and us. To avoid confusion biblical scholars have often used the word charity when translating the word for this nonromantic kind of love from the ancient scriptures. But all agree this is a poor solution. There simply is no English word for the kind of love that motivated Dr. Frieder. Therefore, many scholars leave the word untranslated from its ancient Greek.
"An English speaker unfamiliar with this Greek word who encounters it while reading will often be confused because it is spelled exactly like an English word meaning 'to stare uncontrollably'. But the word's Greek pronunciation, ah-gah-pay, is as different as its different meaning. Agape refers to unconditional love, love that is given without any expectation of return, love that has no other purpose than love itself. That is the kind of love that motivated Dr. Frieder's whole professional life.
"He was a man blessed with powerful analytical intellect, and certainly he enjoyed the exercise of his intelligence in pursuit of solutions to the health problems of his patients. But he could have found equivalent pleasure in using his intellect to address the problems of making a fortune. Had he taken that course in life he surely would have accumulated vast wealth, and, I am sure, he would have done so without the lying, cheating and outright stealing that, to our eternal disgrace, has become the norm in so many business and investment practices. But he chose instead to place his talent always at the service of those who sought his help. He always used his exceptional abilities, not selfishly, but rather in a manner directed by love, by agape.
"We can do no more to honor his memory and to keep a part of him alive than to emulate him, to attempt to follow his lead and to treat all with whom we treat with love, with agape. And toward that noble goal I ask in Dr. Frieder's name and memory that we all dedicate ourselves."
V
When the memorial service was over Christine went, as is the custom of ministers, to the entrance of the hall to greet and comfort mourners as they left. Because so many persons attended this took some time. The last person in the line of exiting mourners was Mary Jane Goodkin.
As the two hugged Christine asked "Where's Ralph?"
"He's still saying Goodbye to Carl" Mary Jane answered.
Christine looked back toward the front of the hall to where Dr. Ralph Goodkin stood with bowed head before the flower bedecked table supporting the funerary urn containing Carl's ashes.
"Do you think I should go to him?" the lady minister asked.
"Please do, Christine. He's taking this pretty hard."
Heuber squeezed Mary Jane's hand then walked to the front of the hall and stood beside Ralph. As she arrived he looked from the flower bedecked table to her and smiled wanly.
"You OK, Ralph?"
"I guess" he replied. "Sad, but OK."
They stood beside each other looking at the flowers and the urn. Then Ralph spoke.
"Your remarks were beautiful, Christine, beautiful, appropriate and accurate. But I think Carl would have been embarrassed by your praise. Did he know what you were going to say?"
"No. I asked him if he wanted to review them, but he said he'd wait for the service. He threatened that if he didn't like what I said, he'd get up and leave. I would have embarrassed him with much greater praise if I had had any hope he might have been able to carry out his threat."
They stood silently for a few more moments, staring again at the urn and flowers. Then Ralph opened up about his thoughts.
"He was more than just a colleague to me. He brought me to the clinic right after I finished my specialty training, and was always like a mentor to me. Whenever I had a hard case I went to him for help. But he wasn't just a great physician. He was a great human too. When I couldn't help Simone I was crushed. My mentor had entrusted the most important person in his life to me, a still wet-behind-the-ears oncologist, and I hadn't been able to help. Instead of me comforting him, he ended up having to comfort me, to help me adjust to the fact that ovarian cancer is a disease we just can't handle yet. He was a great man, and there wasn't a thing I wouldn't have done for him."
Then, remembering Carl's remark about wanting to end his life with a sexual affair, Ralph smiled a small, sad smile.
"Well, perhaps I wouldn't have helped him fulfill his last wish."
The words were no sooner out of his mouth than Ralph wanted to bite his tongue for saying them. He and Mary Jane were on so comfortable a first name basis with Christine they tended to forget she is Reverend Heuber, a Christian minister of God. The earthiness of Carl's last wish may have been completely biologically natural and normal, nevertheless it was not the kind of topic to mention to someone who, by her own description, is an old maid preacher. He hoped she'd let his remark pass. But she didn't. With the same attention to detail and completeness of explanation that had made her an excellent philosophy professor she sought clarification about a last wish she had not known Carl had ever expressed.
"Carl never mentioned his last wish to me. What did he want?"
Her first reaction was one of regret, a fear Carl might have wanted something she might have been able to obtain for him, but a fear he never had gotten it because he hadn't asked her for it.
"Oh, it's neither here nor there."
Ralph's vague answer was an attempt to duck her question. But his evasion didn't work.
"Please tell me, Ralph. I'm concerned we might have let Carl down."
Goodkin knew Christine well enough to know he couldn't avoid answering. He wished Mary Jane were there. He'd told her of Carl's last wish, and as a married woman she could have explained it in a less embarrassing manner than he could. He'd stuck his foot in it good, and there was no escaping. So he tried to put his answer in the most nonspecific terms he could imagine.
"Well, he once mentioned a desire to have a particular relationship with a woman, a kind of love relationship."
His words were deliberately ambiguous, but he hoped they'd satisfy the lady minister. He stared at one of the flower arrangements, not daring even to glance at Christine.
"Oh, good!" she softly answered. "Then he didn't die disappointed. In the last months of his life, I can assure you, Carl enjoyed the most dedicated love relationship with a woman any man could have hoped for."
Though Ralph had spoken with deliberate ambiguity he had hoped Christine would infer the meaning he was camouflaging. Apparently she hadn't. What is worse, she apparently assumed the Christian love, the agape she had given Carl in abundance, was the kind of erotic sexual love their departed friend had had in mind. Ralph couldn't allow her confusion to continue. If Christine ever learned the real, earthy nature of the love Carl had wished for she'd be horribly appalled at ever claiming to have provided it.
"I'm afraid you didn't understand" Ralph began in a voice and state of complete embarrassment. "The love Carl had in mind for his last wish was not your kind of love. It wasn't Christian agape. The love he sought was biological and erotic. It was sexual."
Ralph Goodkin is a big man, over six feet tall and over two hundred pounds. But at the moment he felt so small he could have walked upright through the eye of a needle.
There was a long pause as both of them stared at the flowers and urn. Then Christine gently responded.
"Sometimes, my good Dr. Goodkin, the two cannot be separated."
Then she stepped into the hall's backroom where, her duties at the service fulfilled, she at last had the freedom and privacy to cry and pray and mourn her loss.
END
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends <
/center>