Clark

At the retirement home where my friend, Cassie, and I go for an hour each week, there is a man named Clark.  Clark is a military man; he has been all over the world.  He is also an active advocate for psychotherapy and has bleached yellow hair, trimmed close to his head.  His clear blue eyes are dimmed now.  The stroke he suffered left it hard for him to see, and I think it's getting harder.

As a young man, Clark lived in a small town in Utah; the population sign said "13,001," he told us.  When he went off to BYU, he decided he needed to change it.  "Make it more acc'rate," he said, skipping over the "u" so it sounded like "ackrit."  When a policeman caught him erasing the 1 on the sign, the man told Clark he wasn't supposed to mess with the signs.

"But I'm making it more acc'rate," he explained.
"How so?" the policeman asked.
"Well, I'm the one and I'm leaving."

Clark lives in C2, I think, in an apartment complex near the retirement home center building.  When we come to the building each week, Cassie and I stand on the second floor, looking down into the cafeteria area where they've been decorating for Halloween - on Monday, they will show two movies and trick-or-treat there - and see Clark eating his dinner at a round table in the far corner.  He tells us these people need love.  He tells us that "matter can't be destroyed, and it can't be created, BUT," (he points his pointer finger up at this, smiling at us), "it can be transformed."

"You are not who you think you are.  You are who you really are."  Clark is an advocate for truth.  He walks with a cane; he doesn't climb the stairs now, something he did do when we first met him.  He didn't remember Cassie and me, I don't think, this time, but he did the second time we came.  "You are my favorite girls," he told us, gentle and kind.

Clark flew Cessnas before he became an official air force pilot.  He was a polygraph expert in Korea.  He had an office and a truck.  When he was moved into the retirement home, a friend took pictures of his office for him, of the pictures on the wall, of his personal mantra.  He has them in a stack on his shelf, and a binder full of papers.

And I keep listening to this song.