Ghosts

I saw a ghost yesterday. A no shit, full body apparition on a job I was working on in a two bedroom apartment in a run-down apartment complex. I was there installing internet service for a very nice Hispanic lady that was doing English to Spanish translations for her cousin who was my actually customer. It was small; two bedrooms one bathroom, maybe 800 square feet. It was full too. Most of the rooms were stacked floor to ceiling, in some places, with things. There were all sorts of things; kid things, adult things, shoes, and junk. I marveled at the mad collection of items that someone thought were important. There was no judgment from me...just a kind of silent awe and wonder at the scene that was lay before me.

I managed to sift through the mass that was most likely a child’s bedroom. If the art and the pictures on the wall were any indicator her name was Estelle and she was probably seven. She had all the usually things I would expect to see in a seven year old girls room…frozen, Disney princesses, and other things of that nature. There was also a 48 inch flat screen complete with Xbox. A sub-woofer, a sound bar, and a hodge-podge of other things that one might associate with a teenage boy or a young man that hasn’t completely come to grips with the fact that he has a wife and children and that his childhood has left him; but I digress…

We were asked by our interpreter if it would be possible to install three video boxes. Yes, three...In a eight hundred square foot apartment with three large televisions. Of course my partner tells her. He wants the upgrade points that would go with such a sale. I’m leaning the other way because I’ve had my fill of this place. It’s hot, I’m sweating and I’m terrified I’m going to knock something over and the whole shithouse is going to come down on top of my head. It’s his call so we decide to run an outlet over the pile of stuff on the bed and through the wall into the closet of the nice woman with all the tattoos who I have previous referred to as our interpreter (yes she lived there as well).

She lets me into her bedroom so I can drill the hole through the drywall…well look at that…a baby. There’s a two-ish year old baby asleep on the bed in a diaper and a t-shirt. She never missed a beat. She opens the closet moves all her shoes out of the way and leaves. So there I am with a Dewalt hammer drill, bell hanger bit, and a confused look on my face. I sure don’t want to wake the baby…I have a baby...I’d knock a guy in the head for waking her up…but there is work to do so I press forward. I slowly, so very slowly press the bit to the drywall and give the trigger the gentlest of pulls. The motor quietly comes to life as I push the button just enough to make the gears turn and for the bit to start cutting…I slowly and very quietly push the bit through the drywall.

It’s hot…why is it so hot? I pull the drill bit from the wall and stand. Out of the corner of my eye I see my partner come up along side of me. He probably needs to see how I’m doing…I turned and moved my lips to speak…”shhh…the baby...” but it isn’t him. I’m looking eye to eye with a brown skin manned with white hair, brown coveralls and a white shirt…his eyes are big and brown like saucer plates…My heart hammered in my chest for two beats and then he was just gone. “I saw you,” I said out loud…”I saw you sir.” The baby never made a sound.

The last job I worked on this afternoon was at a retirement facility. We moved some equipment for a nice lady that was living there and had just moved to another room. Her daughter was very kind to us and went out of her way to make sure that we were able to work with as much ease as possible. That’s something you’re always thankful for in my line of work. Our nice lady was at a celebration that had lots of food and music and all the things that one would expect at such an event. She joined us as we were wrapping up. I covered the usually bullets to make sure that they had what they needed and everyone knew how to work the equipment. As we started to leave, this wonderful old lady starts to tell us about how she raised three kids all by herself and….”oh mamma…you guys better get out of here before she gets going.” We left. I was disappointed. I love a good story. We found our way out…moving silently past people in wheel chairs, people in seats, people looking out windows into nothing. Head down eyes down I kept saying in my head as I walked trying not to make eye contact…until finally we were out the door.

We sat in the van closing out the job. A tall older man starts to make his way toward the van. I cringed inside as telco people do when someone walks up to them randomly…some question forming on their lips; it never ends well. “I know you guys are busy but I was wondering if I might ask a favor…” here it comes “my mother-in-law is in the dementia ward and has pulled all the cable out of her equipment. She’s done quite a job and I can’t figure out how to put it all back together.” I can feel my partner’s eyes burning into me…”of course,” I said. I follow the man back into the facility and into his mother’s room.  She sat there, looking perfectly normal…talking with her daughter-in-law, not even throwing a glance my way. I quickly get things back together. I show him how it all goes just in case something like this happens again (I get the feeling it happens all the time). He thanks me profusely on the way out and tries to press a twenty dollar bill into my hand…”no sir, I can’t take that…it’s not a good deed if you pay me for it.” He starts to insist but I shake my head, shake his hand and tell him “it’s going to be ok.” He smiled a weary smile at me, thanked me again and went back to his mother.

I am reminded again of the shortness of this life. It is precious and not to be spent frivolously. The foundation of my faith is built on the teachings of a man from Galilee…and Nazarene as the story goes. Someone that taught that it was better to give then to receive and that I should treat my neighbor as I would myself. Simple stuff really. Unfortunately I don’t live those teachings every day. I try. Some days I get it right and some days I don’t. I move in a world that gives me access to people at their most personal…their most vulnerable. I see them at the beginning of their lives, the middle, the end, and sometimes the after. I see the towers they build for themselves, the things they acquire, and the loneliness those things bring.

My sweet nurse told me one time that when you put the blue gown on, everyone is the same. It doesn’t matter who you are or who you were. The blue gown doesn’t care if you’re rich, poor, or some place in the middle. The blue gown is the last thing you wear when you take your last breath. It just doesn’t care, it’s blue and it’s just for you. Stuff doesn’t matter. People matter. Be good to one another and live well.

(the story about the ghost is true just in case you were wondering)

FIN

Man I Am

My wife told me once that men need to be around other men. She said this somewhere in the early days of our marriage when I thought I knew most everything about most everything. The ironic thing was that she actually did understand quite a lot about men even back in those days. To make matters worse, I actually understood that too but at that point in my life had no idea how to make any changes that would enable me to have new male friends. It wasn’t always that way though…

I served in the US Marines from 1984 to 1988. I was a 1371 which is a Combat Engineer. I spent a couple years on Okinawa and a couple at Camp Pendleton. It was peace time. I got to travel some but I didn’t go slay bodies or spend any time under fire. Like many young men I served, I did my time, and I got out. The reason I mention it is because the Marines have a culture of brotherhood and the men that you serve with can become closer to you than your natural born family.

It’s a culture of adversity you see. Its foundation is built on the idea that, “yea this sucks ass but we’re going to get through it together.” It means that you won’t let me quit when I want to. It means that I’d be too ashamed to quit. It means that I got your back and you got mine no matter how terrible things become. Men don’t fight wars for flags, or countries, or ideals for the most part. You fight for the guy on your right and the guy on your left.  Those are the guys that you are going to keep alive so they keep you alive. If you ask a Marine what he misses about the Corp when he leaves, he will tell you “the camaraderie.” Pretty simple stuff so far?

Men can have a hard time forming new bonds even under the best of conditions. It only gets more difficult as you get older. As we age, we have a habit of lapsing into a cycle of laziness and cynicism. We no longer look at ourselves as being worth knowing. We forget about the things that use to drive us or that we had passion for. We can and do slip into obscurity and die quietly (hopefully with a long suffering wife that has put up with our cranky asses).

My wife became my best friend and as time went on, my only friend. Now if you’re a lady reading this you might be thinking “well that’s right, you should be best friends with your wife,” and on some level you’re right. However there is a difference between being friends with your wife and having a bud that you trust. I am not of the mind that I need to know absolutely everything about my wife or vice versa. She needs to have her own thoughts that have nothing to do with me and I need to have separate thoughts that don’t have her at their center. Now don’t misunderstand what I said. My wife and I know each other so well we don’t even have to talk some times. I can hear her thoughts in my head and I know she can hear me as well. So we are connected on a very deep level. We are of one mind and one purpose. We are dedicated to one another in a way that keeps two people together over the course of a life…but even on that level, a man needs to be around other men.

When I make that statement the first thing that comes to my mind is that we need each other so we know how to act. I know that sounds strange but I believe that one of the reasons the men of this generation have such a hard time with their identifies is that they don’t have strong men around them to teach them what is and is not acceptable and appropriate. We need to make fun of each other, to be encouraging, and to talk with. There aren’t too many things I won’t discuss with the wife but I don’t want her to see me be unsure or weak. A good male friend is someone that you can show that side to. Sure, he may tease you a little…call you a puss or tell you to man the fuck up but he won’t let you go off the grid. He will hold you to whatever standards exist between you. If you’re lucky enough to be in a strong group of friends you’re even better off. That’s what a platoon of Marines can be like. It’s tough…mean at times but you know where you stand. There is no ambiguity.

I haven’t had that in a long time. I recently took a new job that put me in a training environment that was so much like the Marines it made my head spin. We started off as a class of fourteen. Over the course of six weeks we lost a couple guys and ended it up with twelve. It was a tight group. We were united by the adversity of the situation. Endlessly being told how precarious our situation was gets on your nerves (i.e., “there are fifteen behind you to take your place if you don’t like it”). For some, they were learning things they had never seen before and had a hard time getting their heads around. We helped each other. We encouraged. We taught. We also cussed, farted, called each other gay, and farted some more. It was like a gang of ten year old boys. It was glorious. I made some new friends and I felt good about a lot of things.

Yes, men need other men. I think if we could find a way back to having more masculine culture things would be better. Men of character and men of substance hold each other to high standards. They don’t lie, they don’t step on others for their own benefit, they treat woman with love and passion, they teach their children right and wrong, protect the weak, and fight back to back for the good of all.

Thank you my new friends for helping me remember.

FIN

Thinking Out Loud In a Public Space

I’m not sure how cheery this will be so if you’re looking for something uplifting, this may not be the place to be….you’ve been warned. I did a phone install in a very lovely home for a very nice man on Friday. I thought it was a large house for one person so I assumed he had a wife and probably a family. Turns out we were there for his 94 year old father who lived in the house alone and whose wife had died a month earlier. They were married for 66 years. If that doesn’t stop you in your tracks right there, then you probably have no soul.

I didn’t see the father at first. He wasn’t anywhere near where I was working. He being 94 I assumed he was doing whatever 94 year old men do. I thought about how tragic it was that he had lost his bride of over six decades and imagined how I would feel if I lost my wife. I tried not to focus on it too much. I had work to do and if I got too vested in this emotionally, I would never get done.

I had to run a phone-jack through the closet to the outside. The son was nice enough to move a bunch of stuff around so as to make my life a little easier. I always appreciate even the smallest courtesy. While I was in there I started to look around; always a big mistake in my line of work. The closet was filled with clothes and shoes that belonged to a woman that no longer needed them. Most of the shoes were covered in dust suggesting that it had been a good long time since anyone had put them on. There were endless bits of a life stacked in boxes and shelves that had yet to be processed by someone that cared about them. You could feel the sadness in the air. It was heavy and thick. I tried to stay focused on the task at hand.

I finished running my wire and setting up my equipment. I went the extra mile to make sure that my work was ascetically pleasing even if it was a laundry room. I made it look like I would have wanted it to look if it was my father. I was pretty proud of myself. I collected the small amount of rappers and wire that I had left over and popped into the adjacent kitchen to toss the bits into the trash can. Then I saw him…

 There he sat. 94 years of living compressed into a small chair at a small breakfast table that he probably had enumerable meals with someone that he cared for more than the breath of life itself. He was thin and pale, a white mop of hair on top of his head. A head that lay cradled in his two palms. He looked down at the table staring into nothing. He neither looked up nor acknowledged my presence. My heart pounded in my chest as I stared at him, seeing all of him and feeling his pain so intensely that I almost choked on it. I backed out of the room silently, respectfully, feeling like I had seen something that was not intended for me.

This man from another time seems to follow me now. I wonder about his life, his wife, and his children. His son was dutiful in his responsibility to his father and I respect that. I am envious that I was never given the opportunity to do that for my own father. I wonder about the long term aspects of being a husband and a father as well. I’m in uncharted water. Most of the lessons that I’ve learned along the way I picked up my own; mostly through hard knocks and bad decisions. I didn’t have anyone to guide me or give me any of their wisdom. I don’t know what that looks like from an adults child’s perspective. I feel like I’ve gained a great deal of experience and knowledge over the course of my life. I’ve had some grand adventure and much heartache along the way but I don’t view those in a negative light. It’s the stuff that defines our character and dictates who we become.

Children are a grand experiment. You try and train them to be good people and do good things. The strange thing is you raise them when you have the least idea of what you’re doing and how the world turns. You do your best and hope it all works out. Then they run to the fore wind. You hope they call or come by. You hope they still want what you have but at the end of the day, they make their own choices and live their own lives. I fear that sadly, you live to be 94, head in hands in a big empty house wondering what the hell happened. If you’re lucky you have at least one that will take care of the phone bill and pick over your bones when you’re gone to throw out the shit you spent your life accumulating that really doesn’t add up to a hill of beans.

My father died when I was 13 years old. I still wonder what he would have made of my life. I wonder if I would want to hear what he had to say. Would we be close? Would I go out of my way to see him and talk to him? I like to think so. I like to hope we’ll catch up someday…when my run is done and all the things I’ve done and all things I cared about have turned to dust…

Remember I warned you.