Special Delivery

Minnesota has a long-standing contract with the gods of weather to provide storms at the most disruptive of times. The custom began long before I was around to object. In truth, we Minnesotans have come to regard a Thanksgiving blizzard as an integral part of festivities. What would Memorial Day be without a tornado warning? Perhaps the most binding clause in our contract, however, is the Tournament Blizzard.

To those of you from less robust parts of the land, and for those for whom the state high school basketball tournament fails to raise a single goose bump, let me explain. March is the magical month. Vagaries of the calendar provide a little wiggle room, a Thursday on the exact date this year’s tournament blizzard is scheduled, or one a few days before or later. A moving target, so to speak. Nevertheless, Mr. Blizzard Man keeps his eye on cars streaming toward the Twin Cities. When roads are properly congested, pow! An Alberta Clipper proper for a tournament blizzard roars into the state out of Canada.

The stage is now set for the saga of Oscar and his demise.

The tournament blizzard had just departed for neighboring Wisconsin, anemic by then, having spent so much of its energy on Minnesota.

I was called to the nearby village of Wright.

Neighbors of an old man named Oscar had found him lying in his barn, apparently dead. I had been summoned to make the fact official. Oscar’s driveway was a challenging series of snowdrifts, but my four-wheel-drive vehicle chewed through them with ease. Several of Oscar’s friends had gathered. They solemnly escorted me to where he lay. Indeed, the old man had milked his last cow. His wife, Lila, reported that he had a history of heart trouble, which seemed verified by the array of medications lined up on his kitchen counter.

Usually a mortician assumes the task of transporting a body. I had serious doubts that a hearse would be able to navigate all that drifted snow, so I decided to bring Oscar back to town myself. His stolid, stoical friends and I maneuvered the old man’s body into the back of my car.

Providing solace to survivors is a regular aspect of a country doctor’s life. Still, I have yet to discover a painless way to inform a woman that she has abruptly become a widow. We trouped back into the creaky old farmhouse, my commandeered assistants and I. I took a place beside Lila where she sat at the kitchen table, rocking silently on a straight-backed chair, a metronome in tune with disbelief.

“I’m sorry.”

Mundane words, mine, threadbare from repetition. Always there is someone left behind. A touch on a shoulder, a brief handhold. Silence shared with a physician whose power to heal has arrived too late. Silence between Oscar’s friends, cast from the same mold of sturdy pioneer, men for whom soft words do not come easily. Silence from Oscar’s wife, a gray woman with wrinkles and work-callused fingers, now alone, wearing a hand-sewn calico dress and shoes “turned over” from use. In truth, I also felt concern for the men who had helped me carry Oscar, the physical stress. They were long past retirement age themselves.

Lila looked at me finally, sealing off her grief. “Coffee?” We agreed, part of the sharing ritual after unexpected death. I asked about her choice of mortician. She went to a worn chest of drawers and removed an envelope.

She held it out to me. “Oscar’s mother died two months ago. Just this morning, he... he wrote out the check to pay for her funeral. Would you deliver it for me?”

I did. Not only the post office makes special deliveries.