Ode to a friend

Our friend Herb had a soft, deep voice and a deadpan delivery that made him seem perpetually glum.

When our efforts to rescue the historic State Fair Carousel hit the media 23 years ago, he was among the first to call. We weren’t sure what to make of him, but he became a hard-working volunteer and fiercely loyal board member during some unexpected struggles. He also became a friend.

One hot July day in 1990, Herb introduced us to his twin passions: eight or ten vintage Cadillacs and a roomful of jukeboxes. There was real joy in his eyes as he powered up the music, and from then on we knew him as a romantic at heart. We weren't too surprised when, four years ago, he married a second time, to a woman from his high school graduating class.

A year later Herb tripped and fell, and his leg shattered. His doctor never questioned why the injury was so severe. When it didn’t heal, Herb sought a second opinion and learned that he had sarcoma, a devilishly aggressive cancer. With chemo and radiation he managed to live three years, instead of the six months he’d been told to expect.

Yesterday Herb was buried. The parking lot was full of old Caddies as his car-club friends said goodbye. His daughter played haunting English horn and violin solos. A carousel pin graced his lapel. Herb was a traveling salesman, a humble man, a sometime curmudgeon, a valued friend, and a dedicated volunteer who found satisfaction in service to the carousel and his automobile clubs. He will be missed.

My September began with melancholy thoughts of my late parents, and in mid-month I was mindful of the loss of my brother five years ago. As we attended services for Herb on the last day of the month, it dawned on me that I’ve reached an age where funerals and loss are no longer rare. But if Anyone is listening, I’ve had quite enough for now, thank you.

A visit to the nature center

Augie was hurtling toward the floor. I watched frame by frame as he landed on his face. On part of a deer skull. With antlers attached. Amid loud, indignant sobs, he clamped both hands tightly over his right eye. I pulled him into my lap, held him, rocked him. Meanwhile, Peter begged, “Let me see your face.” Finally we saw: A large bruise was forming an inch below the eye. We shared a look that said omigod, that was close. As we left, I reached to help Augie down from another bench. “Grandma,” he said, “I didn’t hurt my legs.”   

Mr. London Street has returned to writing his lovely 100-word posts, something at which he excels. When this real-life adventure happened yesterday, I decided to try writing about it in exactly 100 words. You’ll just have to accept that antlers of various sizes are a popular part of our local nature center’s hands-on learning tools. Augie is fine; Peter and I are still a bit shaken.  

Missing my brother

Bruce, Keith, Allen, David, 1959?

I grew up as the oldest of six children. My sister is about four years younger than me, and starting three years after her birth my parents had four boys in six years. The first, Bruce, was smart and funny and very introverted. Until he left for college, he was pretty much inseparable from Keith, 14 months younger, also smart, and extroverted enough for the both of them.

Bruce sailed through engineering school and undertook a master’s. That’s where he ran into his first roadblock: his adviser left for a year, and Bruce could not complete his master’s project. I’m sure he didn’t make an issue of it; instead he found an engineering job at a paper mill in Michigan.

He was never one to stay in close touch with the family, but after a while he went incommunicado. Unable to reach him, my mother finally called the paper mill. She was told he no longer worked there. They connected her with the personnel department, where a woman did her a great kindness. “I can’t talk about confidential information,” the woman said, “but let me tell you what I can.” She said people had liked my brother, and that he wasn’t fired for misbehavior. The bosses were all engineers, she said, and engineers are not known for communication skills. Bruce was not the first bright new hire to need more help and guidance than he was given.

Uncle Bruce with Lisa and Chris

Losing his job was a shock for to my brother and to our family. Nobody had taught us that workplaces are not like classrooms. Assignments aren’t always spelled out clearly, criteria can be hazy, and you won’t always know the questions, let alone the answers. Bruce found another job, and another after that. He always waited until his money was running out before he started looking, and sometimes he cut it too close for comfort.

Then one day he got hired at a startup company making PUR water filters. They had a great story. Their new technology was more effective than anything on the market at the time. It could convert sea water to potable water; it could even pull a drink out of a mud puddle for someone in a remote location. Their first customers included the US Navy. One day a news story broke; a couple had been stranded at sea aboard their boat and had survived by cleansing sea water through their PUR filter. With the help of that story, the company’s founders talked their way into the household market. Business took off. The company grew. My brother was loving it. He received awards for developing new approaches to inventory control and distribution. He made friends, bought a little house, bowled in a league with brother Keith, enjoyed the occasional visit to the local racetrack, and happily joined the family three or four times a year for holiday gatherings.

Me (left) and Lynne with Al, Dave, Keith, Bruce 1985

One day Peter asked Bruce, “If money were no object, what would you do?” The answer: “Sit around in my underwear and watch television.” We thought that was a good answer. Happiness is being satisfied with what you have, loving what you do. And he seemed happy enough; he was extremely well-read, had opinions on lots of subjects, and never minded when somebody disagreed. He refused to take things personally.

Everything changed when the founders sold the business to Proctor and Gamble. Oh, the company survived for a few years, during which Bruce shook his head about various changes made by the “suits” from P&G. Then came word that the plant would close. All the jobs were exported to Mexico. My brother tried to be stoic about it, but I know it broke his heart. He was one of the last to leave; he was the one who knew how to disassemble the lines and ship everything out.

He looked for another job, without much hope of finding one. When funds ran out, he began to take small weekly withdrawals from his retirement funds. He stopped paying his utilities and began to live off the grid, using a windup flashlight and a sometimes cooking on a small charcoal grill. He was probably sitting around in his underwear, but he was no longer watching television. Except we didn’t know it.

My brother Bruce had had a heart attack in about 1991, when he was 40. At the hospital, we’d heard the doctor’s advice: stop smoking, eat less fast food, get more exercise, take these pills. Over the years, he did seem to be eating more wisely and riding his bike a lot.

On Friday, September 15, 2006, he went to his bank to withdraw a few dollars for the weekend. He dropped to the floor, dead of a heart attack at 55. When we got his keys and entered his house, we learned the truth of his existence. That’s when we discovered that he had no electricity and no heat (we don’t know for how long). About three years of unopened mail was tossed on the floor near and under his bed. Books overflowed their shelves. There was a lot of dust, but no animals and no filth – it was not a garbage house. But it had problems, including the fact that the cold water in the kitchen sink was running full blast and couldn’t be turned off. Clearly it had spilled over at some point; floor tiles were lifted out and there was still the smell of mold.

Emptying Bruce’s house after his death, it didn’t take us long to find the very pills he’d brought home from the hospital 15 years earlier, plus the prescriptions, never filled. We also found cigarettes, and his reading spot reeked of cigarette smoke. We found bags of empty Mountain Dew cans, and new cartons in the kitchen. And a large bottle of aspirin.

Clearly (to me, at least) he knew the risks. He was having pains, had no interest in being medicated, and stocked up on caffeine and nicotine, two things that could help send him on his way.

Al, Kay, me, Dad, Keith, Dave, Bruce 1993?

He did it because he was depressed. He was running out of money and knew he’d never find a job like the one he’d loved and lost. Things around his house needed fixing, and although he had assembled an impressive supply of tools and how-to books, he couldn’t manage to do the work. I talked with my doctor about some of the things we found, and my doctor called them classic indicators of depression.

How could we not have known?

We held a celebration of his life a month later. We called all the numbers on his cell phone and located many former co-workers who considered themselves his friends. They all came, and they brought others, and they all told us how much they had enjoyed my brother. He was funny, a good story-teller, proud of his family, and very, very good at his job. The stories they told, and their obvious regard for him, were extraordinary gifts for our entire family.    

Having been stunned by finding the hidden sad and dysfunctional part of his life, it was wonderful to discover the equally well-hidden happy and successful part. It makes me smile to think of it now. Except that I am angry – very angry – that an American company shipped my brother’s job across the border. Of course he’s just one among hundreds of thousands. This exporting of jobs is not good for the country or for the people to whom it happens. I wish I believed that all the other people’s stories turned out happier.

It has taken me a long time to write this, and to decide whether to publish it. The time has come. Bruce, I thought about you all this week. We miss you. Rest in peace.

  

 

Class reunions: young and old, then and now

Recently, Marion at Create Joy and Wonder wrote about the anxieties involved in preparing to attend a high school reunion. Reading her words reminded me that I attended my (gasp) 50-year reunion in July and still haven't written about it.

This reunion has stayed on my mind longer than the previous three I've attended, and it has eluded easy description. I finally understand why.

Attending this reunion immersed me in a dual reality. For three days (including the four-hour drive each way), memories of high school came flooding back. Some were in sharp focus, some were hazy, but all were in living Technicolor. I recalled the faces of my classmates as they once were, youthful and unlined. And yet, the faces that now surrounded me were - like my own - older, creased, a bit saggy. I often found myself peering into those faces, seeking traces of the person I had known. Sometimes recognition came easily; other times the transformation was almost complete. This seemed especially true of the men; I easily recognized a small handful, but sometimes, looking around the room, I was tempted to wonder whether some of us had wandered into the wrong party.

I began to notice that I was carrying in my mind both faces, the "then" and "now" of each classmate I happened to speak with. With 350 graduating seniors and more than 200 at this reunion, my mind was a crowded place! 

Something else was crowding in as well. No matter the conversation, I always had a visual subtext: We are old. Yes, we might be smart, fun, enthusiastic, engaged in lots of interesting pursuits, but the faces kept reminding me, we are old. I shouldn't have been surprised. Most of us turned 68 this past year. But what we had come to celebrate was our youth. We surrounded ourselves with yearbook photos - classes, prom, band, the Sweet Shoppe, the junior class play. I could visualize those scenes; I knew how they played out, I could even feel the emotions - elation, disappointment, embarrassment, nervous excitement - that accompanied those days. It was amazing to be able to reach out and touch those times, and yet to have traveled so far from them.

The juxtaposition of then and now, young and old, has stayed in my head since that mid-July reunion. It reminds me that over the course of our lives, we are at once the same and different. The shy small-town girl is not so far from the surface. And if I deny that, if I think for example that I have become totally citified and sophisticated, then I am not being authentic. I've run into a few people like that at reunions over the years...people who have cultivated new manners of speaking and have seemed to consider themselves far more refined and cosmopolitan than the rest of us. Maybe they are, but I'd rather have it all - the cosmopolitan-ness and the roots in our working-class northern Minnesota town. In that sense, if we are lucky and wise, we are still young. 

I mentioned to my hair stylist that I was going to my reunion. She had recently attended one in her tiny hometown. I said I thought that people going to their first reunions sometimes worried about how they would be perceived. "For some people, it's all about job status and success," I said. "Oh," she said. "At ours, it's all about the dance-off."

That seems like a good approach. What really matters at reunions is the same thing that matters in life: what kind of person are you in the here-and-now? At each of my reunions, I talked with dozens of people. I hit it off with some, and not so much with others. Beginning way back at our ten-year reunion, some of the best conversations have been with people I didn't know well in school. It surprised me then; it doesn't any more. A couple of people I did know well have turned out to be not all that interesting. But any disappointment has been more than offset by the delightful conversations, some lengthy and others relatively brief, in which a wide variety of classmates and I have discovered the things that connect us through the years and across the miles.

P.S. If you have a reunion coming up, go to it. You'll have fun. The best way to prepare is to contact people you'd really like to see there and arrange to spend time together. My friend Cynthia recruited me and our friend Nancy, and I was delighted that she did. It meant a lot to reconnect, and it was too important to leave to chance.

P.P.S. During our reunion, the planning committee asked whether we wanted to come back in five years or ten. We all raised our hands for five. And we all made a joke that we knew wasn't really a joke: Who knows whether we'll still be around ten years from now? (And silently I added, Who even knows about five years from now?)

I'm planning to be at my next reunion, feeling both old and young.