IT has been a long time since I posted, I know. I'm sorry to anyone who is watching (not as if I think there are a whole lot of folks out there holding their breath waiting for any words of wisdom from over here! LOL). It's just been very busy. The girl is in whirlwind mode, getting ready to graduate, with all the attendant insanity that accompanies that transition. And it's been spring here in the Northwest, and finally some nicer weather, so that we can finish the huge project we began a month ago. We did get some help one weekend from my family to get the walls framed, but there's still a long way to go.
One of the largest reasons I have not posted recently is that I've had to have some time to process something that happened last week.
I am the only one in my department at work, but I have a coworker who is my equivalent in another department. We frequently work on some similar projects, and though we probably would not have sought each other out to build a friendship, we've had to both become familiar with the same set of brand new state regulations, so we have spent some time working fairly closely. This is not the story of a workplace affair, even if it sounds like the same setup.
'Calvin' moved here from a larger city a couple of years ago to take the job with our city. I wondered for a long time why someone would come to a small town like ours for no reason. He had no friends or family here. But - he was good at the job they hired him for, which was a type of middle-management in his department. There had been a lot of problems in that job before he came, which left a mess that he had to sort out from the inside out, first thing. And on top of all that came me, bearing a four inch thick book of state regulations that our city had just been scooped into, and that he and I had to navigate and become compliant with posthaste.
To make a long story short, as I began working with him, I got to know his situation a little better. Calvin has a wife that has some kind of cancer. The incurable kind. B and I saw them at a company BBQ last year, and met her for the first time. She came to just be there, though she couldn't do much but sit in a folding chair and smile. She wore a blanket, in the mid July heat. She looked beautiful and exhausted. I wondered what it was, but didn't dare ask. It isn't the kind of question you ask.
This February Calvin and I had to go take a two day class to gain certification in our jobs. I wondered about his wife, but didn't ask. I did ask him if it was going to be okay, him being gone out of town for two days. He seemed pretty easy about it, telling me 'Oh, yeah', as if it were nothing. We rode up to the class by carpool, and in two hours one way, dinner the next night at Outback, and two hours home, we had told all the stories that were fit to tell, and I knew everything about him but how his wife was. Calvin never talked about his family. I found out the circumstances that had led him to our town, and how he'd left the big city. I found out his preferences in music, what he thought about politics, where they went on vacation a few years ago, and of course, how he felt about the new state regulations and how the affected our jobs. I talked about my family, but I never asked about his. It was as if it were a taboo subject.
The week before last we got a call from our State inspector, saying he was going to be in town Tuesday morning to meet with Calvin and I about a worksite that had been out of compliance, and while he was in town, we'd all get to sit down and go over the new regs. Calvin had been looking forward to it. He had a lot of questions.
I reminded him about the meeting Monday morning, and went off to lunch. I had a busy day, so I never made it back around the other side of the office till mid afternoon. B came to my office to find me.
"Calvin isn't going to make it in tomorrow." He said. "He went home for lunch, and his wife was gone."
It took a while to sink in. Gone. Not gone, as in to town for a soda pop. Gone.
Calvin was a work acquaintance, not a really close friend. But we'd spent enough time together for me to be able to put myself in his shoes. And that was the worst part. For the rest of the day it echoed.
He'd gone to work, thinking everything was going to be okay. He went home for lunch, and she was GONE.
For some reason, it put me on vapor-lock. I went home Tuesday trying to find some equilibrium. I found a bit finally after B chased me down, feeling somehow how lost I was. He wrapped his arms around me in a hug and I cried and cried and cried, until I felt like the hole in me was huge enough to fall into. The echo in my mind was that shock: it was okay, and then it wasn't, unexpectedly. It wasn't like it was really unexpected. She had been very sick. But it was unexpected enough that he'd gone into work, thinking it was just another day.
How terrible would that be? Could I cope with that sudden devastation? Can anyone? B wants our lives to be that way when he retires. I will just go off to work and leave him here. But what if? What if??
We have been steeling ourselves for this long struggle, this lonely road. But what we forget is that it can come anytime, even over lunch, as quick as that. It underscored for me how much I can't imagine losing B. I know that there comes a time that we all have to make that last transition, even if we don't want to. Even if we think we still have things to do, time left. But please, God....not anytime soon.
