Moris and Mary

Moris got in my car on Beverly, just a few blocks from where I get my Starbucks. Somewhere near a little Motel on Beverly. This is my morning beat.

He tells me his phone isn't working and that he kept calling Lyft but no one answered and his morning is frustrated and that a nice man at the motel called me for him and then I came in seconds.

He tells me he likes my voice and my accent is soothing. I ask him where his is from and he tells me France.

I ask how he's doing.

He tells me his wife is in a rehab and he's going to visit her.

I ask him if it is for drugs or for something else.

He tells me Mary had a cerebral event that caused her to stop speaking or walking. Moris is in his 70s, a scorpio. Mary is a Taurus.

Moris has been married to Mary for 42 years. Mary had something happen that no doctors can figure out. He looked over at her in the morning one day and she could not communicate. He took her to UCLA, where they performed an MRI. The doctor told Moris that this was going to be hell if he kept any form of hope alive, because the likelihood of her getting better was remote.

She is the moon and the stars of my heart, he tells me.

For two years, he's been driving from Laguna to Santa Monica to visit her. For two years, he gets in his car even though the doctors tell him she isn't going to get better. For two years, he waits for his love to speak to him. He says that she recognizes his voice, but that mostly she sleeps.

I tell him to move closer or he's going to wear himself out. His son lives close by and he is currently staying with him. 

I keep asking questions, did it happen all at once or did it happen over time. I ask if it was an aneurysm or something else. He says there was an event on her right lobe but not something they were used to seeing and that her right lobe is damaged.

Suddenly, it looked like a bomb went off in the distance. It looked like a bomb. I point it out and keep asking questions. Moris tells me I am a good person. Moris tells me I'm the best person he's met in awhile because I actually care and feel terrible that this happened to him and his wife.

I tell him I'm not that good. My ex is in trouble I can't help him because he can't get sober.

He somehow sees that as a good thing, that I can admit when I'm beat and though my voice is soft I am very very strong. I say, not at all. I am a failure in life. I am a writer, whose book hasn't sold. I have no money, no children, no house. I don't even have an Android charger.

Moris reads me a poem, it is in a foreign language and he speaks a line in that language and then says it in english. It is a real poem, not just someone playing at it. It is a poem written from someone with a poet's soul.

Who wrote that, I ask him.

She did.

We get to Santa Monica and I drop him off, we say our goodbyes like, Moris--you and I are okay, we will survive it. And he tells me he wishes me luck and to keep writing things down.

I watch him walk off and look at how many rides I have left to do today, but he was my first one.