Re: Bad Week

The mark of maturity isn't having not made the mistake in the first place,
it is to avoid making the same mistake again.

I had a friend, Tim, who was an usher at my wedding. A coupla years later,
while we managed a motel in Fort Collins, Colorado, he drove out from
Illinois and spent three days with us and I took him up and we did some
hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park. When we moved back to Wisconsin in
1989, Tim and I started hanging out again. He met a girl at youth group and
arranged for a young preacher friend of ours to perform the ceremony. Tim
asked if I'd stand up in his wedding, and I willingly agreed to take part.
But part of the arrangement with the minister was that the young couple
would meet for pre-marriage counseling with our mutual minister friend, and
something (I don't know what) cropped up that concerned the minister. He
tried to work through whatever it was, but time grew short, and ultimately
he said he couldn't in good conscience perform the wedding at that time
given what he felt was still outstanding and needed to be worked through.
Despite my long friendship with Tim, I said if the minister (whom we both
knew and liked and trusted) wasn't comfortable performing the wedding at
that time, I wasn't comfortable lending my support as one of those standing
in support of the couple. As a result, I didn't go to the wedding, and the
bride made sure Tim cut off our friendship.

Another friend of ours from the same church group, Chuck, was also slated to
stand up in the wedding, and also had reservations, and he politely but
firmly backed out of standing up. However (and this is important), Chuck did
attend the wedding simply as a friend, while I did not. Therefore, Chuck
maintained his friendship with Tim and was able to be there while Tim and
his bride, indeed, embarked on 15 very difficult years, culminating in a
messy divorce. Along the way, Chuck suddenly took ill and died. He was
barely 40. I saw Tim and his bride at Chuck's funeral. It was the first time
in over ten years. We remembered Chuck and had a good time of mourning
together. I hoped we'd restart our friendship, but it wasn't to be. More
years went by.

After Tim's divorce, he finally looked me up on Facebook, and we have just
started the difficult process of thawing that strained relationship.

I frequently wish I had done as Chuck had, attending the wedding without
standing up, showing love without bestowing approval, but I wasn't as mature
then. I like to think I'd do things differently now.

Johne Cook
| http://raygunrevival.com | http://authorculture.blogspot.com |


On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 10:44 AM, Ronald Hatton <[email protected]> wrote:

> I've been reading this a couple of times, Paul, and I still have no words.
> I went through a kind of similar situation many, many years ago, and every
> now and again, I wonder what I should have done differently, or if I would
> have or could have at the time. My heart goes out to you, and I pray that
> you find peace.
>
> On Nov 10, 2010, at 4:50 PM, pcg wrote:
>
> > I've had a bizarre week. This is part confessional, part therapy, and
> > part explanation (not excuse) for my sharper-than-usual tongue these
> > last few days.
> >
> > Six or seven years ago, I started working at a print shop, and RC was
> > the first friend I made there. He introduced himself by asking if I
> > wanted to go a sneak-peek of the new Tim Burton film (must have been
> > "Big Fish"), and we hit it off immediately. He was the sort of friend
> > you don't need time to warm up to, the kind with whom you have a
> > common language that revolves around beloved movies, music, books, and
> > so on. I introduced him to "The Office" and The Swirling Eddies, and
> > he introduced me to Geoge Romero and The Decemberists.
> >
> > We worked together for a couple years, and became very close. My son
> > and his daughter were born two weeks apart, and we had a joint baby
> > shower. After I was laid off from another job and lost my apartment,
> > at a very, very low point in my life, he let me -- no, he insisted --
> > that I come live with him and his girlfriend. They'd just bought a
> > house together, had some extra room, and most importantly, we'd get to
> > hang out every day. We spent many a long, rowdy night there on the
> > porch, smoking cigarettes, drinking white russians, arguing about
> > movies and music and politics and God, and making each other laugh
> > hysterically. He always called me "brother," and liked to say I was
> > the brother he needed when he was a kid.
> >
> > He drank too much, and so did I. Sometimes when he drank he'd get
> > belligerent -- usually about benign things, but he was otherwise such
> > a kind and generous guy that I never let it bother me. But one stupid
> > night we got into a heated argument that ended up with me packing my
> > meager belongings into my car and driving away, as he stood in street
> > shouting at me from behind.
> >
> > Over the next week or so, he called a few times, leaving voice
> > messages apologizing for his behavior, swearing it was all water under
> > the bridge, it would never happen again. But I was pissed, and I
> > wasn't ready to let it go. The last voice mail I got from him was when
> > his girlfriend left him. He left a message saying, "She left me, she
> > took Lilly, and I need you to come over, man. I don't care about any
> > of the other stuff. I just need my friend, man."  I didn't get the
> > message until the next day, but I knew that if I called him back, it
> > would mean going over there to console him, and I just wasn't ready
> > for that.
> >
> > He eventually stopped calling. I've thought about him a lot over the
> > last two years, wanting to clear the air, get together for a drink,
> > and go back to the way things were before that stupid goddamn fight.
> > So the other night I tried to call, but his number wasn't working.
> > He'd never been on Facebook or MySpace, but I thought I might be able
> > to find him somewhere online, so I Googled his name. Instead of
> > finding a phone number, I found his obituary.
> >
> > Apparently he passed away, in a hospitable, in Davenport, IA a few
> > months ago. The obit didn't mention how he died, and I was left
> > stunned and confused. It had to be some kind of weird prank site,
> > or...something. My first impulse was to contact his ex-girlfriend, as
> > they had a daughter together, and she must know what happened. It took
> > some sleuthing, but I was determined to solve this, and I finally
> > found her online -- doing hardcore porn. You know, selling ten-minute
> > clips of herself in various situations for ten bucks a pop. The
> > pictures revealed that she was filming this stuff in the same house
> > where we all lived together, which meant she must have kept the place.
> > I was so weirded out by this development that I couldn't bring myself
> > to contact her.
> >
> > Finally, I tracked down another friend of RC's, and got a little
> > closure. Deprived of his daughter, and anguished over what his ex was
> > getting up to, he drank himself into a coma, where he lingered for a
> > while before his organs started shutting down, and he slipped away at
> > the ripe old age of 33.
> >
> > I've been kinda drifting around in an emotional fog for the last few
> > days. I didn't break down emotionally until last night, when it all
> > finally became real. It's such a stupid, pointless waste. I've never
> > lost a friend who was that close.
> >
> > I've been having nightmares about him. Last night we were in an empty
> > cafe in the middle of nowhere, and I was surprised to find him there.
> > He wanted to hang out, and I told him I couldn't, but said he should
> > come over sometime. He started crying and telling me he couldn't
> > leave, because there was nothing outside, and when I looked out the
> > windows, there was nothing but pitch black emptiness, and then I
> > looked back, and he was dead. I woke up creeped out, and couldn't
> > shake it.  It's been a strange week.
> >
> > Anyway, the guilt and dissonance will pass, I know. But the world is a
> > poorer place now, and I'm a poorer man. I have to believe that God was
> > watching me back then, using various people and circumstances to guide
> > my steps, and to keep me from going down the same path RC walked. I
> > miss him now. It seems stupid, since we hadn't talked for a couple
> > years, but he never felt that far away, and I always knew we'd patch
> > things up.
> >
> > http://tinyurl.com/2vccdcr
> >
> > *sigh*
> >
> > --
> > -pcg
> >  [email protected]
> >
> > --
> > dadl-ot mailing list
> > http://mail.thehood.us/mailman/listinfo/dadl-ot_thehood.us
> > http://news.gmane.org/gmane.music.dadl.ot
>
>
> --
> dadl-ot mailing list
> http://mail.thehood.us/mailman/listinfo/dadl-ot_thehood.us
> http://news.gmane.org/gmane.music.dadl.ot
>

-- 
dadl-ot mailing list
http://mail.thehood.us/mailman/listinfo/dadl-ot_thehood.us
http://news.gmane.org/gmane.music.dadl.ot