I’ve arrived early for my yoga class. More accurately, I am so late for my regular class that I decide to wait for the next one. I’m not sure what to do. I never hang out at my health club. I usually get here late, take a class and hurry out.
I’m preoccupied with worrying about my daughter. She’s been suffering strange symptoms - debilitating fatigue, muscle weakness and difficulty concentrating. Normally a competitive athlete and good student, she’s suddenly too sick to train. The doctors have no answers.
Should I even stay for class? I can’t decide. My heart isn’t in it. I absentmindedly rummage through magazines on a rack and eventually pick up a Newsweek.
Suddenly, a man is standing next to me. I’ve seen him here before, but we’ve never spoken.
“You’re one of us,” he whispers, his eyes twinkling.
I look at him for a moment, showing my confusion.
“A liberal,” he explains.
I look down at the magazine, suddenly understanding his joke. I wonder how many people still know this was THE liberal magazine when I was a kid in the 1960s.
He raised his finger over his lips. “Shhhh, there aren’t many of us here.”
“True,” I agree solemnly, playing along. The health club was in a politically conservative suburb.
“I have to get back to my reconnaissance mission,” he says. “Code name: Jerry. Good luck. Carry on. I won’t blow your cover.”
He walks off. I smile and stay for yoga.
I see him periodically over the next several weeks. He is across the room gathering towels or wiping tables as I rush to class. Each time, he puts his finger to his mouth, saying “Shhh.”
I mirror his secret salute. The silliness makes me feel better.
One day, I am more hurried. I stop at the club quickly to retrieve my lost cell phone. My daughter is waiting. We are leaving for a competition. She probably isn’t well enough to participate, but she wants to try. Plus, we have non-refundable reservations.
Jerry sees me. “Do you have a minute?” he asks, ashen faced and serious.
“Can we talk later? I’m really late – as usual.”
He looks disgruntled, but I rush off.
Two weeks later, I return to the club and look for my spy. Instead, I find a poster announcing that popular tennis coach Jerry died of cancer. His co-workers tell me he died about ten days after his diagnosis. The funeral was yesterday.
I walk back to my car and cry.
It takes me days to face listening to a recording of his funeral. In it, the rabbi says Jerry was kind and generous. He’d left home and lived at Haight-Ashbury as a young man in the 60s. He was a political activist and outspoken about injustice. He had a wicked sense of humor and told fascinating stories.
I never got to hear those stories.
After that, I begin to arrive at the club early to hang out and talk. I always pass a memorial plaque with his name. Sometimes I reach up to touch it. Sometimes I apologize for not taking the time to listen. Sometimes I simply say “Shhhh!”
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The author’s daughter was later diagnosed with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME)