Mike

I deleted Mike Long's email address from my address book today. It was a painful, tacit reminder that I'll never speak to him again. I never met him in person, and yet I consider him one of my best friends.

Mike was freight broker to whom I was introduced by a mutual business acquaintance about 15 years ago. Part of the work that I do often involves shipping equipment to other parts of the country and out of the country. Mike's business was to find truckers to haul this freight at competitive prices. He was from Houston, Texas and spoke with a "typical" southern drawl. As time went on, I often kidded him about being a no-good redneck ... he would respond with comments about snobby Yankees.

If I needed a quick price, I learned to simply email Mike. If I needed to talk to him on the phone, I tried to make sure I was going somewhere that was at least a half-hour drive and then call him from my cell phone. Mike liked to talk. And I like to talk. You just gotta have the time to do it. He was just a little less than 3 months older than I, so we had a lot of common historical touchstones. We both were raised to work for whatever we had and to be accountable for ourselves. We had a common disdain for slackers, ripoff artists, and scalawags in general.

Mike had a a lot of unique sayings. He almost always referred to me as Doctor Dave. Discussing details of a transaction was know as "bumping heads." A job that went off without any hitches was "slicker than whale shit." Pricing was always "more if you can get it, less if we have to."

Like all of us, Mike made some decisions in life that were fairly poor in retrospect. But he never blamed hard luck or bad times on anyone. He stood up, took his lumps, and moved on to the next thing. He loved midget car racing and I've come to learn that his was pretty adept and successful at it. His daughter was the apple of his eye.

Mike died just 3 short weeks ago. He had told me about some medical issues, some old and some fairly recent. Less than a week before he left this phase of life, we were "shootin' the breeze" and he told me that his most recent bout with the medical field had gone well and he was "ready to go at it again." He was found in his easy chair with the TV remote in his hand. Quick. Peaceful. And a shock to all who knew him.

He had rekindled a flame with a long-lost friend and was recently engaged to her. He sounded so happy and content when he talked to me about her and the plans they had made. She had relatives in the area where I lived and he and I talked about the day that they would come to visit and he and I could finally "bump heads" and share a cold beer together in person. My friend and I would finally shake hands.

I always try to learn lessons or remember old truths when things like this happen. Warren Zevon, an American songwriter who succumbed to cancer a few years ago, was asked what he had learned when he found out his death would be swift, sure, and painful. "Enjoy every sandwich," he responded. Live now. The chores will still be here tomorrow. We may not.

Treat every encounter as the possible beginning of an amazing new friendship. Mike and I never met and we could have been merely business acquaintances, but we let it be more than that.

Value those who are important in your life. They'll probably be here tomorrow, but they might not. And you have no say in the matter.

Have a zest for life. We'll all get our share of kicks in the ass. We can either retreat to a corner and hide, or we can move on and enjoy what we do have.

My circle of friends is now diminished by one. I have no choice but to keep going. I already miss our phone chats. I suppose I could become bitter, but I would be betraying my friendship to Mike. I'll just have to do my best until it's time to "bump heads" with him on the other side.

Adios, my friend.

BUSTER

Blogger's Note: This writing is actually about 8 or 9 years old. It re-surfaced in my memory and I thought I'd share it ......

I had to bring Buster, our Golden Retriever, to be put to sleep today. I have a challenge for anyone who still thinks that strong men don’t cry: Stand and watch as your only daughter kneels next to her best friend, stroking his fur and saying goodbye to him and try not to shed a tear or, more aptly, a river of tears. Think back to the day that, as a young girl, she picked out her new little buddy, carefully singling him out from his brothers and sisters to be her companion for the rest of his life. Pause and remember all the times that she came home from a basketball game after not playing her best or being let down by a boyfriend who really wasn’t worthy of her in the first place and how she would go to Buster to throw her arms around him and have him lick her face. And realize that tonight he can’t be there to comfort her and understand that you are a very inadequate substitute.

It seemed like Buster was doomed from the start. As he grew, we noticed that he seemed to have trouble getting up from a lying position. Tests and x-rays revealed hip displacia, a condition common in his breed stemming from over-breeding. We listened carefully as the vet explained the various procedures along with their risks and costs. We decided on the middle-of-the road approach of having some groin muscles cut. The benefit of this relatively minor surgery was that it would free him from the pain of having ill-formed joints rubbing together. The tradeoff was that the stress it would put on the rest of his system would probably shorten his life span to seven or eight years. If Buster could sense that he had a physical limitation, he decided to just laugh it off and push on. He would chase almost anything you threw with reckless abandon, crashing through brush, over banks, into the backyard shed, and, much to my wife’s chagrin and his peril, through a multitude of backyard flowerbeds.

Anyone who says that dogs don’t have personalities are either cynics or just too damn busy to pay attention. Buster was just pleased to be who he was. It didn’t bother him that he looked somewhat splay-legged when he walked or ran; he was just going to make the most he could out of life. Tracy usually had a certain route that she took when she walked him around the neighborhood. When they got several hundred feet from the house, Buster would turn around and look up at her. At this point, she would roll up his leash and put it in his mouth, still attached to his collar. He would pick his head up high and proudly walk himself home. When he got to the front yard, he’d stand there wagging his tail, so full of himself that he was smart enough to do such an awesome stunt. My wife swears that he smiled when he did something smart or mischievous. He just loved to go racing off the back deck to clear the yard of squirrels or the neighbor’s cat when it erroneously forgot where its boundary lines were. When his job was finished, he’d look at the house with that smile, waiting for someone to praise him for his chivalry.

Buster enjoyed all the seasons, but I think if he had to pick just one, it would be winter. Shoveling snow was always an adventure with him around. He’d try to catch every shovelful on his back, pretending that you were trying to hit him with it. The exertion of trying to make his way through deep snow with bad hips took its toll on him, but he’d only rest a short time before he was at it again, plowing his nose through almost every square foot of the yard.

I come from a family that had a wide variety of dogs and, as a homeowner of my own, I’ve had several more. Buster was, hands down, the smartest dog I’ve ever had. Teaching him almost anything was a breeze. One-word commands were all he needed. If he didn’t learn something, it was apparently just not important enough to him.

Tonight my daughter asked me if I believe that dogs have souls. I answered that I don’t think they do. But I do believe that Buster was allowed to come into our lives to remind us of some very important truths. In a world so full of cynicism, Buster was constantly cheerful. People break vows and go back on their word, but Buster was always faithful to his family. Too often, love is short-lived and governed by things like prenuptual agreements and the like. Buster made us realize that real love is unconditional, unadulterated, and eternal.

I’m a busy person. Some of my time is taken up with things over which I don’t have much control. Some of it is taken up with self-imposed chores and commitments. Buster used to annoy me to no end when I’d be working on a project in the yard, trying to get something done. He’d come up near me a drop a ball on the ground, waiting for me to pick it up and heave it for him. If I threw it, he’d bring it back. If I threw it a hundred times, he’d bring it back and drop it a hundred and one times. If I ignored him, he’d keep nudging it closer and closer until I picked it up; sometimes he had to nudge right up onto my foot. The last time we played this game was just three short weeks ago. And as I think about him tonight, I realize that he taught me one of the most important lessons of all: sometimes you just have to stop everything and chase a ball around the yard, because life’s just too damn short.

Uncle Ubald

No, that's not a mis-type in the title. My uncle's name was Ubald. He was my father's last remaining brother and he died yesterday. His name was not unusual in a family of one girl and six boys whose names included Romaire, Lucien, and Medard. Those of you not of French-Canadian descent will chuckle or try to figure out how to pronounce these names. The rest of you will smile with a mixture of recognition and amusement.

His passing is significant because he was the last living member of my Dad's immediate family. The dubious honor of last surviving member of that generation now belongs to my mother. She is 83, drives to church every day, and is a serious challenge to outliving me and many others in my generation.

As I said, he was the last living uncle on my father's side of the family. I believe he was 96; I'll find out for certain when I see the newspaper tomorrow. He was the third-oldest of 7 children; my dad was the youngest. The matriarch of the clan and oldest of the family, my Aunt Sister Gladys, died just over a year ago, 5 months shy of her 100th birthday. Dad always told us that Uncle Ubald would outlive everyone else in the family because he lived such a clean life. While Dad and his brothers spent a good share of their youth doing the things that we all do and then swear to our kids that we didn't, Uncle Ubald apparently just wasn't interested. He was a farmer by trade and worked many years for a gentleman farmer, raising and showing prize-winning cattle. In his hometown of Bridgewater, there is a fairgrounds with several permanent buildings; one of them, many years ago, was given the name Ubald's Cow Palace. The sign remains to this day.

The last time I saw Uncle Ubald, at his 95th birthday party, he stood poker-straight and greeted me with a firm handshake, as he had done for all the years that I knew him. I joked with him that I really hoped I had inherited his genes and not those of my father, who had a heart attack at 52 (and lived to 78) or my Uncle Lawrence who died in his driveway at 66. I will miss Uncle Ubald. He was a quiet, serene gentleman who lived a simple, fulfilling life.

Most of all, his passing is yet another reminder that time marches on. If you believe that this world is all we have, our days of living for the now are waning. If you believe this is just a dress-rehearsal for whatever kind of life comes next, we've got limited time to get our lines and wardrobe in order.

One of my favorite Rolling Stones songs is Time Waits for No One. The last verse says:

Men, they build towers to their passing, yes
to their fame everlasting;
Here He comes choppin' and reapin',
hear Him laugh at their cheating.

And time waits for no man, and it won't wait for me;
time waits for no one, and it won't wait for me.

That'll make you sit up and pay attention.

Snow Job

I like to think of myself as fairly tolerant, though those who know me best might snicker at this assertion. But really, while I am pretty staunch in my own beliefs, I also think that I am tolerant of others' views, no matter how misguided they might be.


But, the older I get, the less tolerant I am becoming with media weather forecasters, especially in winter. Of course, I run the risk of sounding like those "I used to walk five miles to school in all kinds of weather" types, but I really think that the media has contributed to our becoming a society of wussies.


Some years ago, I took a trip to upstate Vermont with my son to visit some relatives. It was early April, just about the time when we New Englanders start to feel that we've probably made it through the last of the snow for another season. We started from Connecticut in the rain. By the time we got to southern Vermont, the precipitation has turned to snow. By the time we hit our destination, just south of the Canadian border, we were in a full snowstorm. About 6 or 7 inches had already fallen and continued for several more hours. What was refreshing to me, however, was the fact that life was going on as if the sun were out and the temperature was in the mid fifties. There were no weather alerts on the television. There were no lists of delays, postponements, or cancellations of activity. People simply left a few minutes early to get to their destinations. Soccer practice at the local school was moved indoors. Life just went on.


In contrast, we had another "weather incident" here a few days ago. It was a Saturday. The weather gurus had begun predicting snow earlier in the week; most reports called for 1 - 3 inches. Then, some of the stations began to say it might get worse. We could get 6 - 8 inches. As the hours wore on, so did the increasing "possibility" of accumulations; why, some even said that we could get an old-fashioned Nor'easter. By noon on Saturday, events were being cancelled left and right. And then the snow began. It fell though the afternoon and into the evening. By 7:00 PM, it was over. The total: 1 - 3", depending on elevation.

Now, what's the purpose of this rant? To encourage a little more realism and a little less sensationalism. In this day of hundreds of cable channels, each one wants to come up with its own angle, something that will set it apart. I would like to suggest that one of them gives us FACTS. If you don't know, say you don't know. This is, after all, New England, where weather and natives are prone to just about anything at just about any time. Tell us the best and worst case scenarios, based on all the conflicting computer data. Don't call a guess a prediction. Don't foster hysteria by being the first to predict a near-catastrophe; be the first one to predict a non-event. You'll have at least one faithful viewer.