The Path of Wellness

Dear Dr Obi,

I am writing on behalf of my father, who recently was denied VA benefits for his service-related cancer. My father was exposed to Agent Orange, a toxic defoliant sprayed along the demilitarized zone in Korea during the Vietnam War. We understand that this is common procedure for the VA to deny benefits, and that many claims are won upon appeal. This is very important for my father. We believe it is essential for the VA to realize the negative impact that cancer has had on his life. The VA documents that we received state that the best type of evidence to submit is a statement from a physician who recently treated or examined the applicant. This should include detailed findings about the condition(s).

It would be so appreciated during your exam today if you could address the issues listed on pages 2-3 of my dad’s VA document. We feel that their brief phone assessment, made in place of a formal VA examination, was inaccurate and narrow in scope. We would appreciate if you could vouch for his eligibility in the form a letter. We have a limited time for the appeals process and would need this letter as soon as possible. Thank you for your concern and care of someone who is so important to our family.

I grew up tagging along with my older brother Jesse while he dug for bottles in the woods. Since we were little, we have made tea and walked and talked about the land, our family, and our neighborhood. We are older now and live away, but our home still calls to us. Made sacred by the stone path my father carefully laid and the trees he planted, it is the place where decisions are made.

On this day, Jesse and I go for a walk after I return from my dad’s treatment center. I am wearing the only pair of boots I can find in the basement—a pair that my dad bought for my mom, but she left behind. They are black leather Harley Davidson boots, of all things, with a heel. They’re a little tight around my toes, but I have no choice but to wear them because of the mud.

Jesse and I first pass through the pig yard where Jesse’s old dog is buried. We only had him for a couple of weeks, but it felt longer. “There’s Chief,” Jesse says. I imagine Jesse befriending a dog who, like himself, had also been abused. I imagine the two of them playing stepping games, retreating backward and forward—Jesse with hands palm up, offering the treats my father bought for him to help him calm the nervous dog.

The day Chief got hit by the bus, I watched through the window as my dad carried his spiritless body through the yard. I had no language to describe this then, but in writing this now, I realize my grief was precisely related to the loss of his spirit. I cried for his and the fragility of our own. My dad let me stay home from school and watch tv “I think it was the first time I had ever seen something die,” I say out loud to Jesse.

My brother went to school on that day and searched for the name of the bus driver from fellow fourth graders. We made note and these details remain: Rose, Bus #2, red hair, Kristy says she drives too fast. I stood poised to give Rose a dirty look from the end of my driveway more than once but, as often happens in life, she drove by so fast, wind actually blew my hair.

Past the pig yard, the next landmark that we pass is the row of beehives. There are six of them. When it’s cold, if you knock on a box and press you ear against it, you can hear the buzzing within. When I was little I sat alongside my father in the basement while he cut wax caps off the combs. He let me eat as much honey as I wanted.

“Honeybees are really important, Laura,” he would explain. “They work for the hive from the day they hatch. Some of them fly up to three miles. They always return home.”

Once in the winter, I noticed black pinpoints of darkness on the otherwise white blanket of snow—a constellation of frozen bees. One by one, I scooped their delicate bodies onto a sled and took them back to the basement. I laid them on the floor next to the woodstove that heated our home, and watched them come back to life. By the time my dad got home from work, the basement was alive with humming bees. “What are you doing?!,” he asked. But he wasn’t angry. One by one, he collected them. I was too afraid of the bees to help him.

Since my dad’s diagnosis, we are wondering what else might be in the water. In elementary school, a boy on my bus showed me the nub on his hand where his doctors believed a third thumb was growing. Years later, the EPA reported that the sewage system in his neighborhood was infiltrating the swampy areas where kids play. Even as a child I knew that morbidity and mortality are spatially patterned.

The bottle dump marks the halfway point along our path. Jesse picks up a flask, examines its color and the pontil scar on its base. Then he tells a story of a different time. I ask Jesse if he knows that one-hour west, residents are concerned that something is making them sick.

“Do they know the reason?” he asks as he wipes the dirt from a piece of glass and holds it to the light.

“No,” I say. “They are trying to prove that it’s worthy of attention and that it’s something in the environment. I have read that the ecological system is like an amplifier—a small perturbation in one place can have large, distant, long-delayed effects.”

We stand atop the cornfield. It is the highest point on the land. The field used to be in our family, but it was sold, along with the mineral rights. Once I dreamed that my mother went arrowhead hunting on this field, but this time she didn’t come home. I told the police that I saw trespassers on our property. They later found her body buried in the snow by the tree line. My dad told my brother and me to get on our best suits. The earth shook and by the end of it, our house was facing north instead of east. We carried the burden of proving that our house had shifted, but it was too complicated of a story to tell.

From the top of the field, if you squint in a way that blurs your peripheral vision, you can block the houses in the development out of scope and home in solely on a farm on Old Frost Road. Jesse and I head down the hill and back to the house. On our way home, we check on the pines that were planted last spring.