My father, Colonel Larry H. Ingraham, USA (ret) was a philosopher, essayist, and humanist. He served a 30-year career as a research psychologist who sought to better understand human behavior and leadership as it applied to the United States Army in the wake of the Vietnam debacle.
He and his research partner, Colonel Rick Manning, wrote a treatise on drug abuse and disciplinary problems facing the Army with recommendations on how to fix it. They sought to help the Army acknowledge and not repeat the mistakes which contributed to the low morale and illegal activity which plagued the post-Vietnam military. They were my first leadership tutors and their book, The Boys in The Barracks, is worth examining for hidden lessons. It is obscure but can be found on Amazon on occasion.
A staunch democrat, my father was an anti-war, pro-veteran advocate who was highly distrustful of the U.S. government because of the Watergate Scandal. He didn’t believe his government would ever tell the country the truth and further viewed the 1980s as a period of largesse wherein the goals of making as much money as possible and getting ahead were directly at odds with living a healthy and fulfilled life. He would be appalled at the rapacious greed of the world today and he’d consider himself fortunate to have missed it.
After he retired from the military, he dedicated his life to one of service, nonviolence, and altruism like teaching meditation and creative writing to the incarcerated. Another of these pursuits was attending to terminally ill HIV patients in Haiti. He sought to understand them, to embrace their situation, and offer them a grasp of humanity in a country that cast them to die.
The following article is his reflection piece on attending to those sick people during a hospice mission trip to Port-au-Prince in 1997. I have taken some editorial liberties with this unpublished work, but I believe he would approve. I also hope he forgives me for any mistakes. When he wrote, I remember him being in a constant state of editorial revision, such was his attention to detail. Kind and selfless, I hope the tenor of who he was translates.
He would have turned 83 this year. Twenty-five years after his passing, I cherish our relationship.
Would that I write like him.
I struggle to shave the scruffy, tangled beard of the youth, an AIDS patient in a home for the destitute and dying in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Diapered and gaunt, his legs and arms drew in on themselves, a dying Christ come to life from a medieval Polish painting.
Too weak to smile or speak, his haunting eyes stared in bemusement at my puny concern for rendering a clean shave at a time when he and death are competing for more serious matters. Like a toothless old man (he was 25), starvation had collapsed his cheeks inwards, the skin of his neck drawn tightly under his jaws.
Delivering a “proper” shave would require reaching inside his mouth to push out his cavities into the path of my safety razor.
Then I remember, I am not here to render proper shaves.
Although I am a Buddhist Unitarian Universalist, I traveled with a group of Christians sponsored by the ecumenical Church of the Savior, in Washington, D.C. The church conducts pilgrimages to places of great suffering: Calcutta, Nairobi, Bosnia, and Haiti. In Haiti, I spend my time at the Sister’s of Charity home for the destitute and dying, where young men afflicted with TB and AIDS sun themselves on the porch.
My motives are far from pure. I’m bloated by my over-stuffed existence, sickened by a culture constantly nudging me to acquire yet more. And I do acquire more, despite my resolve to live more simply, to eat more sparingly, to dress more plainly. I hope in coming here I will sear the images of poverty into my core, that I will return able to keep my vow to give up eating refined sugar.
Refined sugar. The reason for importing African slaves to the New World in the first place. How many people perished to sate the appetites of white Europeans for sugar and rum? All these noble thoughts, and I consumed two pieces of Baklava for breakfast this morning!
But why Haiti? Why not the poor at home? Isn’t this simply slumming thorough the Third World under the guise of spiritual adventurism? I reply I don’t wish to limit my service to the U.S., but seek to identify with suffering everywhere. I hope to return more attuned to the pain of the world and the joy of life. Such a juxtaposition.
Yes, damnit, I want to find joy. How is it possible to look squarely at the world, to see suffering as it is, to own the suffering as my own, and then transcend that suffering through compassion for myself and others? Buddha found joy in, not grim, stoic endurance. Might I also find joy?
At the home for the destitute and dying, the sister shows us to the aprons and supplies, and then suggests we do what needs doing. She smiles radiantly and seems happy and absolutely loving. I think on this. The sisters don’t exactly take a vow to be cheerful, but Mother Theresa insisted that if they cannot be cheerful they should not serve. Mother’s vision was that no one should die without knowing they are loved. She insisted we are not called to do great things, but to do small things with great love.
My first day at the mission, I am apprehensive. Part of the spiritual adventure, I think, is facing my fears. I choose to go first to the hospice to learn freedom from fear—fear of the poor, fear of disease, fear of blacks, fear of filth, fear of death. I end up with a kidney-shaped hospital spit pan, a disposable razor, and shaving cream.
Because I speak neither French nor Creole, I bow to each patient with a Namaste greeting and a smile. I point to the shaving gear and begin shaving them. As I shave I chant, “let the beauty, truth, and justice that I seek be the life that I live.” The chant keeps me focused on the task at hand; it helps me smile; and it keeps me centered. I find shaving a deeply meditative experience.
So finishes the day and on my way back to my hotel, I weep behind my sunglasses. Back at our hotel, palatial by Haitian standards, it almost seems obscene to enter the swimming pool, or to expect iced water. Potable water would be enough. I vow yet again to give up sugar, yea, even the taste of sweetness.
The next day, without quite knowing how, I end up on the ward with the most seriously ill. I offer greetings and massages and force myself to look into their eyes and smile. I find myself quite naturally greeting them with folded hands at the chest. I massage several young men with Kaposi’s Sarcoma, the large, purple blotches characteristic of advanced AIDS. Other tuberculin young men hack and choke when insecticide is sprayed around the ward. These young men who have lain on their back for days moan their satisfaction with my massage.
I apply lotion, massage, and contemplate the absence of muscle tissue. Bodies have begun feeding on themselves, life consuming life to paradoxically preserve life. I watch a heart throb visibly between the ribs of one patient. On another, brown, cracked skin sucks up the lotion like a parched garden absorbs gentle rain. I continue my chant, later reflecting I fear I am just rubbing bodies without love, like a mindless robot polishing cars. This thought plagues me as I finish for the day.
After a night of fitful sleep, at breakfast I announce to my fellow pilgrims that I am ready to go home. All of my chanting, all of my spiritual disciples cannot protect me from the misery that surrounds me.
Death is death. Whether in an American nursing home or a Haitian hospice, I can get all the poverty and suffering I can stand in Washington, D.C. I enumerate the reasons for coming here. I was so excited—and fearful. Now comes the let down. I struggle to maintain perspective on why I am here, exactly. Spiritual adventurist, indeed. Some go bunji jumping. I meditate in Third World latrines. I don’t need this; just send my compassionate person pin in the mail.
On our way to the home we are re-routed due to a protest. We drive through a market street. Nothing so bad here; nothing we haven’t seen many times before. Then we turn off the main road. Suddenly we are looking directly into people’s shelters (dare I call them homes?) Naked children stare in wonder and excitement, chanting, “Blanc, Blanc!” and “Hey, you!” with outstretched hands.
Adults crowd around the van peering in the windows. Safe social space is at a premium. I am afraid, but our guide insists we visit local artisans to “support the local economy.” Leaving the van in a guarded school yard, we follow our guide into the slum alongside an open sewer filled with trash and turds. The path is sometimes no more than three-feet wide, covered in crankcase oil. Naked children smile. Eyes stare from windowless hovels. I brush against women washing clothes and look directly into their cooking pots. Men glare at us with unmistakable hostility.
The children beg at every turn, yelling, “Hey, you! Hey, you!” A man draws a laugh from the crowd with a crack about, “Big Papa,” an unmistakable reference to my stomach which the children pat, just to be sure it is real.
From there we return to the home where I repeat my shaves and massages, and also deliver clumsy haircuts. I chant the Haitian proverb, “Nobody listens to the cry of the poor, or the sound of a wooden bell.”
But I come to a realization. On this business of high spiritual adventure, I think the adventure is expanding my capacity to love, which means confronting and overcoming my fears. If religion is not doing this, it is merely an appendage of not only a comfortable life, but a somnambulant one as well. Wake up to the high adventure of loving more completely every moment of the day and of the night. The next day we say our farewells and board the plane to the First World, only a short flight away, to the United States.
In the end, what have I really accomplished in Haiti? I find myself looking at our foreign policy and our national interests through lenses of those not our citizens, and I often see greed as our core motivation. I vow to refuse to buy from companies whose business practices encourage the exploitation of foreign labor. Nike. Walt Disney. Walmart. To name just a few.
Having come to appreciate the sounds of wooden bells, I now see that for me serving others is not optional. In the words of Vietnamese Zen master, Thich Nhat Hahn, “Happiness is not an individual matter. When you are able to bring relief, or bring back the smile to one person, not only that person profits, but you also profit. The deepest happiness you can have comes from that capacity to help relieve the suffering of others.” I didn’t really know this before Haiti.
No, I came to change myself, and on the flight home I reflect on perhaps the most important interaction I experienced.
Snip-snip. Snip-snip. Snip-snip.
I am cutting the hair of a young man dying of AIDS in a Sisters of Charity home for the destitute and dying, San Fil, to be exact. I try to achieve the tenants of Mother Theresa who insisted if the sisters cannot be cheerful they should not serve. If there is a purpose for me here, perhaps this is it.
Snip-Snip.
We fall into barbershop chatter, just passing time under a tree, in a timeless nattering when he asks, “Are you rich?”
Snip-Snip.
“Rich? No, not me. I’m not rich.”
“Do you eat every day?” He asks.
“Yes, but I am not rich.”
Snip-snip. Snip-Snip. Snip-Snip.
He’s yet more curious. “How many times every day do you eat?”
“Three times a day,” I answer, clearing my throat. “Unless I am fasting.”
“Fasting?! What is this ‘fasting’?”
“When I choose not to eat.”
I pause trimming his hair when he turns to me. “You choose not to eat! Ahhh, you are VERY rich!”
I shake my head in protest. “Oh, I am not rich. I eat simply, mostly vegetarian.”
Snip-snip. Snip-Snip.
He continues his query. “Do you sleep inside?”
“Well, of course. Where I live it is rainy and cold.”
“Does your roof leak? Is your floor muddy? How many people sleep with you?”
“Only me. I sleep alone. Or with whomever I choose.'“
He laughs. “You choose?! Hmmm, you are impossibly rich!”
Snip-snip. Snip-Snip.
“How many rooms in your house?”
I shrug. “It is a small townhouse, only seven rooms, not counting the two full and two half baths.”
He turns again, almost facing me. “Half baths?! You mean just for shitting?!"
I nod.
“Ooohhh, you are wealthy!” he exclaims, marveling at the thought.
“Now, it’s not what you think—Oh, excusé moi!” I apologize as I nick his ear with the scissors. “It’s hard to explain, but I am not rich.”
“Well, how many clothes do you have?”
I pause, dabbing at his ear with a cloth. He doesn’t mind.
“Do you mean shirts, jeans or slacks, suits and sport coats? Are we counting neckties, shorts, stockings, pajamas, swimsuits, overcoats, sweaters, shoes, slippers, boots and running apparel? I really haven’t counted, but what’s the point? As I’ve stated, I’m not rich.”
With a final snip-snip, I step back, admiring my handiwork. Not bad for a first time barber, I think.
My erstwhile customer, dying of AIDS in the Sisters of Charity home for the destitute and dying in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, slowly feels his head, evenly scissored to the scalp.
He smiles broadly.
I look into his eyes and smile back.
“Merci. Merci beaucoup!” he exclaims.
I fold my hands over my chest, a Namaste greeting, in silent gratitude.
He gingerly stands, then studies me pensively. “If you are not rich, then who is?”
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Your dad was a good man.