The Cocktail Cart Edward Bear M & J Publishing PO Box 460516 Denver, CO 80246-0516 Tele: 800-854-3402 E-mail: [email protected] Web: http://www.edwardbear.net ISBN 0-9644357-1-3 193 pp $12.95
"Dying," wrote the great 19th century American poet Emily Dickinson, "is a wild night and a new road." Sometimes, even on Friday afternoons in an otherwise tranquil hospice, dying can be especially wild and new.
The Cocktail Cart is an unusual novel about such a place. The story involves a middle-aged man, Edward Gallagher, who, after receiving 29 parking tickets and not paying them, is sentenced by the court to serve 100 hours as a volunteer at The Hospice of St. Michael. His specific assignment is to administer the "cocktail cart," an apparatus that is precisely what it sounds like-a rolling bar stocked with wine, beer, and a full range of alcoholic beverages that is moved from room to room to serve the hospice patients on Friday afternoons. One irony in this particular court sentence is that Mr Gallagher is a recovering alcoholic.
Much of the book weaves two major story lines. In one, the reader accompanies Edward as he pushes the cocktail cart serving drinks and getting to know the people who have come to The Hospice of St. Michael to die. We meet Gladys who is deeply religious, constantly quotes the Bible, and asks the new hospice volunteer why she never gets to hear her favorite hymn, "The Old Rugged Cross," played on the community piano. (Edward later investigates this. Evidently, there had been an unfortunate incident at St. Michael's in which an overzealous Christian volunteer baptized an old Jewish lady on her deathbed just as her children, all of whom were lawyers, walked in on the ceremony. From that time on a policy that discouraged explicitly religious music outside of formal chapel services was instituted.)
Other characters who constitute The Hospice of St. Michael's are David Sparrowhawk, an angry young Native American man with AIDS; Mrs. Watkins, the widow of a Nobel Laureate who has been harboring a dark secret about her late and famous husband; and Mr. Ambrose, a congenial older man who has self-described "brain fever," who is passionate about movies but can never quite keep them or their actor-stars straight ("On the Waterfront-let's see, that involved Merlo Brandon, Karl Madden, and some broad with a saint's name.").
The second major story line in the novel involves the relationship between Edward Gallagher and Sarah. Sarah is an audible, but not visible, spiritual guide who mentors Edward along the way as he tries to be an effective listener and companion during his cocktail cart tours at St. Michael's. It is Sarah who teaches Edward appropriate things to say (and not say) in response to young David Sparrowhawk's rage, Gladys' narrow religious views, and Mr. Ambrose's confusion. It is Sarah who guides Edward to understand and appreciate the importance of forgiveness-of self and others-and gratitude for gifts great and small. It is Sarah who teaches Edward how to help dying persons let go of life. Along the way he learns, as well, to let go of a son whose tragic death has haunted him for decades.
In one of several epigrams listed at the beginning of The Cocktail Cart, Edward Bear (the author's pen name) quotes an ancient Hindu proverb: "Help thy brother's boat across, and lo!! Thine own has reached the shore." Thanks to wholesome effort, making his share of mistakes, and attending to the whisperings received from his painfully honest spiritual advisor, Edward Gallagher transforms a court sentence into a productive, graceful, and even beloved volunteer activity. He grows in his ability to help other people die in peace. And in so doing, he learns to find grace and peace in his own troubled life.
This short novel is charming and often engaging, but is not without flaws. Perhaps due to the fact that it is self-published (M & J Publishing is the author's own label), there are several places where an outside editor may have helped with grammar. Also, the strange blend of philosophy, theology, and mysticism that saturates the novel's narrative may be offensive to some people. A theory of reincarnation involving multiple levels of spiritual existence is communicated has the angelic Sarah being five stages higher up the metaphysical ladder than mere-mortal Edward. (In other words, according to this theory Edward has to die and be reborn five times to reach Sarah's level of spiritual perspicacity.) While I would like to see orthodox and mainline religions be open to a myriad of possibilities about an afterlife, Emily Dickinson's characterization of "wild" may aptly apply to this one!!
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In the end, however, I liked this book. The Cocktail Cart takes a fresh look at life and death in an inpatient hospice facility. It is colloquial and at times humorous. It reminds the reader of truths we may have known all along but sometimes seem to forget: that forgiveness is more powerful than retribution, that deep spiritual peace may only be achieved after one has gone to war within oneself, and that in the midst of dying there can still be a great deal of learning and living.