Dying and Living

Chip Vater died ten days ago on the fifteenth and just now have I found the time to write. Ten days ago. That makes today Christmas. There are times in life that feel like that black ice on the highway--you’re going along and you hit it and suddenly nothing is in your control (if it ever was) including when things will slow down. Ten days ago Chip was at work and something heavy fell on him and he died and the next thing I know I’m at a visitation standing in line for hours and then a funeral, crying like a schoolgirl and then a Sunday morning memorial assembly trying to say something honest and helpful without resorting to cliché (all the while thinking Chip is going to come up the back stairs with a cup of coffee and life can go back the way it was) and then it was Christmas Eve, candles and more hugs, and now here it is Christmas and I’m in Findlay, Ohio surrounded by family and wondering how Bethany and her kids are doing today.

He’s not, of course, going to show up anytime soon with or without coffee. His children are forever without their father. Bethany is a widow. Chip didn’t make it out of his thirties. And I’m pretty sure I don’t subscribe to lots of the positive spin that seems to be so helpful to people at times like these. For all of the stated and hinted-at reasons why Chip’s gone, the only one I can live with is that metal is heavy and gravity is real. There it is--come and take a good look. Get it out of the way. (Sorry Tasha.) Not the most comforting thought maybe, but you can wear yourself out trying to resolve Man’s free will and the sovereignty of God. Things here are broken--redeemed, but broken--and expecting it to make sense may be asking too much. That may say something about the quality of my faith; I don’t care anymore.

People here are the same way I think, broken but redeemed. None of our small group of believers will ever be the same. We all have our own grief to explore. (My new friend David says that grief is a real thing that refuses to be ignored.) Bethany and the kids will continue to feel the loss the deepest and be aware of it for the longest, but they’re a part of the rest of us. We really are all of us in this together. You jump, I jump. At some point we’ll probably be stronger for having gone through this together (in fact I’m certain that’s already taking place) but I’d rather have skipped this part.

I guess one of the things about deciding to do life among a small group of friends is that stuff like this hurts. There’s no anonymity to hide in, no ritual to make us feel like everything’s okay. Just a missing father of four, husband to one, and brother to many. That and lots of love. And hope. And maybe sometimes that’s enough.

Merry Christmas. Hug your family.

Really?

So Randy (see “Finding Freedom in the Cage”--July 7, 2003) says to me today, “I don’t think you’re as transparent as you could be when we talk. I think you sugar-coat things and hold back on some stuff.” It wasn’t quite out of the blue--we’d been talking about the rarity of healthy, authentic friendships and “relationships” --and when he looked at me and turned from the hypothetical to the personal I must confess that I expected him to congratulate (if not thank) me for being such a real, honest friend. Apparently not so much. He wasn’t being mean and it didn’t feel like an attack. In fact, he went on to say that his concern was for me--that I was missing out on a level of relationship that would feel good if I’d let myself get there. Wow. This is the kind of thing I’m forever saying to other people. It caught me quite off guard and has distracted me all day. It doesn’t even bring me down as much as it has completely preoccupied me. What do I do with this? I asked Randy for an example and he couldn’t think of one, though he did mention that he’d noticed it recently at Friday’s but neither of us could remember the specifics of the conversation. I made him promise to point it out the next time he felt like I was “pulling back” (his phrase) so that we could look at it. If he’s right it’s completely subconscious and unintentional. Now I’m left with a very, very uncomfortable self-awareness.

And here’s the kicker. Among the churchy people in my life, when such things come up, people tell me that I’m transparent and honest and that they find that refreshing. To Randy, however I’m guarded and closed and careful. As far as I can tell there are three ways to resolve this dichotomy. One is that one of those two opinions is inaccurate, but I don’t buy that because both come from people who have spent significant time with me. Another option is that I’m two different people depending on who I’m with. This may be true to a degree (Casey says we’re all living “Fight Club”) but not to the extent that the two conclusions could be this far apart. The third explanation is the most bothersome to me and also the most likely. Could it be that the standard for transparency has been set so low by the way we do church that anyone who has even a little “different drummer” to him is considered to be some sort of rebel without a care for what people think? Have we so homogenized acceptable “Christian” behavior in the pursuit of seeming spiritual (whatever that means) that someone like me who has largely abandoned the chase is perceived as more honest? (I also get “down to earth” a lot.) Could it be that among people who live in the real world (people like Randy) where people don’t feel the pressure to come off as hyper-spiritual someone (like me) who’s still dealing with years of social conditioning falls more on the other end of the spectrum? Is this stuff all relative? Downright distracting. I have no answers (and don’t know that I particularly want any).

Here’s what I know. All of the same factors that make Randy one of the last people from whom I wanted to hear something like that are the same factors that necessitate that he’s one of the very few people aware enough and honest enough and interested enough in our friendship to challenge me like that. It had to come from him (or one of maybe three other people). He loves me and is willing to risk hurting my feelings (they're not hurt) to move our friendship to a healthier level. It’s humbling and it reminds me that God hasn’t set me down in Home Depot 3822 to straighten out all of those lost people. We’re there for each other. I think I had forgotten.

I don’t know yet what I’ll do with all of this. I hate to think that I’ll pay such close attention to my conversations now that they’ll fail to be real on the other side of the scale. I’m pretty anti-self-awareness these days anyway. This is all new. I’ll let you know how it goes…or maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll just keep it to myself and tell you everything’s fine…

All of this on the day that Andy Pettitte leaves the Yanks. Damn.

It Must've been the Mistletoe

Jill from our electrical department came back to receiving today with an older lady (mid 60’s maybe) who was looking for a box, “about the size of a water heater.” I informed her, as Jill already had, that we generally crush our empties as they come back rather than keep them hanging around in the way. She sighed and looked more disappointed than you’d have expected and I must’ve given her a curious look because she then explained the whole scene to me. “My nephew,” she said, “wants a girl to sleep with, so I’m giving him a blow up girl for Christmas.”

What do you say to that?

Just When You Think You Know Someone

Stumbled onto a heavy conversation yesterday in the cage. One of my friends at work was talking about the day twenty years ago when her big brother died. He’d been farther into drugs than is healthy and was too Quaaluded to swim when he fell out of the boat. Just like that one day her big brother was gone. What she remembers most vividly all these years later is going to clean out his apartment and finding a plate of peanut butter and crackers neatly arranged, wrapped in plastic and set in the refrigerator for a later that never came. She talked about how hard it was for her idolized (if flawed) big brother to be gone. Then she talked about how just six months before that her husband had left her for a younger woman. My friend was twenty-four at the time. Twenty-four. What does a year like that do to someone? Who might she have been? How did she find the grace to forgive? We’ve worked together for nearly four years now and, come to find out, I never knew her at all. I suppose I still don’t. Suddenly lots of things she’d said before make more sense. (Incidentally, this is part of why judging people gets so tricky—you just never have all the information.) Amazing how you can spend forty hours a week with someone for years and talk and leave so much still buried. Takes a long time to begin to know someone. God give me patience.

Repeat after me—My job is not a waste of time. My job is not a waste of time. My job is not a waste of time…

James is Funny

So I’m sitting in my truck this afternoon because they make me take a lunch, and I see this guy (it’s always a guy) drive out of the parking lot with his truck loaded down with fifteen or so bags of concrete. No big deal right? I work at the Home Depot and people buy concrete there every day. Thing with this guy though is that he loaded it all onto the hood of his Bronco. The HOOD. Dude put a layer two bags two deep all over the hood and then piled it up high on the passenger side. Left it a little lower on the driver’s side so he could see to drive and then drive he did. How far he got we’ll never know but it was easily the nutsest thing I saw all day.

When you see something like that you have to tell someone and I hadn’t been back from lunch twenty minutes when I grabbed James. He was amused but not impressed. James is a fifteen year Depot veteran and has better stories than anyone else in the store. “I seen a fella one time in Florida,” (they all begin this way), “drove up in a Cadillac and bought a 4 X 8 sheet of ¾ inch plywood.” James said “Cadillac” the way people used to say it when Cadillacs were impressive things to drive. “This old boy,” he continued, “threw that plywood up on top of that Cadillac and grabbed a cordless drill out of his trunk. I asked him if he wanted some rope and he said no, he had it and he ran 3 inch drywall screws down through that plywood into the top of that Cadillac--A CALDILLAC--put holes all over it and drove off.”

James is, by now, about ready to pee himself he’s laughing so hard at his own story (which is part of what makes them so funny). “I asked him, ‘what in the world are you doing?’ and he said, “it’s my boss’s car.”