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SUNDAY JOURNAL

An imagination's long, charmed life reveals itself

By EDUVIGIA T. ANCAYA
Published March 26, 2006

By EDUVIGIA T. ANCAYA

One afternoon, on one of those routine office days of my youth, I entered the examining room to see the last patient.

"Hello, Mr. Lasting," I said to a shriveled old man. He was sitting, his arm leaning on a walker. Next to him sat a woman, a heavyset, German-looking matron.

He didn't answer.

"Is it Abraham Lasting?" I said.

I noticed a questioning look in his eyes. Accustomed to working with older patients, I yelled the question.

"Yes ma'am, doctor," he answered.

The man struck me as vital, with his deep base voice and intense blue eyes, but faded in his bony, angular features and frame, his furrowed skin and hunched posture. His hands trembled.

I asked him what the trouble was.

"My wife says I have a hickey, and she is madly jealous about it," he said, pointing at the woman with his thumb. She rolled her eyes.

"Can you show it to me?" I asked. "Is it on your neck?"

"Where else?" he said.

I leaned in to examine him. He took a fold of my skirt, rubbed it back and forth between his thumb and forefinger, and grinned at me.

"Nice, silky material," he said, his dentures dancing.

His wife gave him a smack on the hand.

"I didn't do anything," he complained.

I examined the "hickey." A brown, raisinlike mole had grown on the patient's neck.

"It's not a hickey," I said. "It's a mole. Want it out?"

"Oh, no. I wish it had been a hickey." He winked at me.

"Do you have any more hickeys for me?"

"Not at the moment."

I wrote a note on Mr. Lasting's chart and was getting ready to leave when I noticed that the office staff had typed his age as 42.

"How old are you, sir?"

"Three-hundred-sixteen."

"I beg your pardon. How old did you say?"

"Three-hundred-sixteen, give or take a year or two."

"That's impossible."

I decided to stay in the room.

"Tell me about your long life, Mr. Lasting," I said.

"Come on, Abe," said Mrs. Lasting, pulling on his arm, trying to make him get up.

Oblivious to her protests, Mr. Lasting shifted his body in the chair and crossed his legs. He took his dentures out, placed them in his shirt pocket and began his story.

"The first time I died was by drowning. I was about 79 years old. I should have stayed home that evening, but I went fishing with a buddy of mine. I just had a checkup and was in great shape. But we ventured too far inside the Atlantic. A black cloud crept behind us and the sky closed on us.

"The boat rode the waves, rocking terribly. I tried to hold on. Waves flew right over the boat. Others splashed on the deck, making it slippery. My buddy disappeared. The boat lost control. I couldn't see anything. Then the boat overturned, I fell in the water, and got tangled in the propeller.

"Of course, I died instantly, and the ocean carried me to a faraway beach and spit me out on the shore. I didn't complain. I was happy to see dry ground again. I didn't go home because I knew no one would believe my story."

Mr. Lasting paused.

"What happened next?" I asked and sat on the examining table.

"I found a new job and a new wife. Life went on until I was 180. Those birthday celebrations in bed can almost kill a man." He winked at me again. "I don't need to explain the facts of life to a doctor."

"Go on, go on." This is fantastic, I thought.

"The second time I kicked the bucket," he continued, "was before my 181st birthday. I fell in the shower and busted my skull, bleeding all over. They thought they'd save me, rushed me to the hospital, operated on me, but I died in the recovery room.

"I got a nice burial: Ave Maria sung in church, calla lilies at every pew, ribbons and golden angels. It was worth dying for all that. At the cemetery, since I had been honorably discharged from the military during my first life, the cadets blasted the cannon salute. My eyes teared and I almost raised the coffin's lid, jumped out and screamed, 'Good job, boys!'

"After they lowered me, I felt suffocated. Water was seeping into the coffin, reminding me of my first death. Luckily, they had forgotten to lock the box, so I pushed the dirt from above and crawled out."

"And then?" I was taking notes frantically on the back of my prescription pad.

"I inhaled a few gasps of fresh night air and hitchhiked to a different state so I could find a younger wife. Too used to the old one. Besides, she could die and I'd be alone.

"I traveled far. I wandered around until I found a job as a welder. The business owner's daughter nursed my head wounds and eventually we fell in love.

"On the weekends we trailed up mountains and swam in creeks. We skinny-dipped. Of course, something bad had to happen. When I was 270 years old, while climbing one of the peaks, we slipped, fell and landed 2,000 feet below on a rock.

"We didn't make it. Then, the same ordeal of the leaking coffin - why don't they seal them properly?"

I shrugged.

"Then I met this girl here. We've been together for 30 years." He lowered his voice. "But . . . I'm ready for a new wife," he said, staring at my legs.

I hopped off the examining table and patted his shoulder.

"I believe your story," I said. "I hope you live another 316 years and return to tell me about it."

Eduvigia T. Ancaya, a dermatologist and writer, lives in Valrico.

[Last modified March 24, 2006, 12:05:36]