A giving heart takes a worrisome pause

The Boston Globe

Beverly Beckham

I watch him all the time. He is my entertainment and my muse. For years, I'd come into my office, glance out my window and across the street and there would be Al, buffing his car, scrubbing his gutters, mowing his lawn, trimming, digging, raking, painting, hammering, hosing, chipping, shoveling, season after season, always doing something.

Or he would be walking Dante, his wife Katherine's big black dog, smiling and talking to everyone he met along the way. Al was a man in perpetual motion. He rested with the same intensity. A summer afternoon about 15 years ago, I glanced out the window and saw him slumped in a lawn chair, head down, not a flicker of movement, Dante asleep at his feet. I thought he'd collapsed and raced barefoot out of the house, screaming, "Al! Al!," waking Dante, who leapt up and barked, but barely stirring Al, who opened his eyes, yawned, and dubbed me Gladys Kravitz, the nosey neighbor from "Bewitched."

t was a name that stuck and that we've laughed about a hundred times, because it's true. I do keep watch over Al and Katherine, but the truth is they also keep watch over me.

Al used to take care of my dog, Molly, every time my husband and I went away - not once a year, but many times a year. He fed her. He let her out. He let her in. He calmed her when there was thunder and lightning. And he calmed me after she died.

He shares his gardening tools, despite the fact that once, when he lent me his electric clippers, I cut his heavy-duty, extra-long extension cord in half. "I'm sorry, Al," I said. He laughed and handed me a new cord still in the wrapper and told me not to worry - he could fix the severed one.

Katherine bakes cookies and Al brings them over. Katherine knits ponchos and baby blankets and Al delivers them. Katherine designs a christening dress and crib sets, and Al drives her all the way to Kingdom Come to find the best yarn and perfect patterns.

Al has slowed down in the past few years. I know this. I don't see him from my window every day. He stopped walking after his dog died. He stays off ladders - not because Katherine and his daughter and I begged him - but because he finally realized he's not as steady as he was. He even washes his car less. And even though he is a very young 79, it takes him longer to get around.

But ... He plays with my grandchildren. He sips wine on my deck. He commiserates with my husband. He shows up at my door with muffins he got at Bingo or something Katherine has just baked. He still rakes and cuts his grass and trims the trees, though he works and then rests - on a crate, in a wheelbarrow, in a chair that he props outside his garage. But that's Al. He may be slower than he used to be, but there's no stopping this man.

When a fire truck paused in front of his house Monday night, I thought it was looking for someone else, a neighbor it has come for several times before. I didn't think it was for Al. Even when the truck pulled into his driveway, I thought, it's not Al. Al is fine. He's inside. He's with Katherine. He hadn't been on the roof or outside doing some crazy thing.

But he wasn't fine. His big, steadfast, generous, unselfish heart that gave and gave, that for all of his life has beat for others, had stopped. Katherine found him unconscious in a living-room chair. Not just resting. No waking up to chide Gladys Kravitz. EMTs pounded on his chest, shocked his heart, and breathed life back into him. He went to one hospital and then another. So many smart, caring people have worked on him. And Al's a fighter.

So we have hope. Will he be OK? We don't know. No one knows. And so we wait and we pray.