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Mon 22 Jun, 2009 06:26 am
Okay. So I can't go to bed without saying something about Janos.
If someone needed something wired or something hung on a wall or a ceiling, I'd give'em Jan's number.
He was the local Go-to.
Good guy, good friend, willing to take any job you'd throw his way, even when those hiring might be a little off.
I never asked him for a cut of the job money.
He needed all of it.
But he always seemed to have an extra bottle of something for me every couple of weeks.
He got everything done. Maybe not exactly on time, but done and the people were happy.
He worked full time in a little crummy theatre where some real art gets done, did all the part-time side work in order to get a little ahead of the landlord and maybe buy his girlfriend of 18 years something.
Ah.
He was always just a little ill, a little in pain, a little slowed up from all the pressures of trying to piece together a not all together life.
In recent days, he seemed smaller to me and more tired and more in pain.
Girlfriend brought the news today.
Some time last Wednesday, they don't when,
for some reason, they don't know why,
Janos died.
He was like fifty years old.
She found him. They had separate places.
(He felt awful Tuesday she said. He went to his place to rest, but when he didn't call... .)
He was in his bed.
Good.
If there can be good in this story.
==
So we are, no. she... is waiting for the autopsy results. They have to do one on someone so young.
Then there will be a service somewhere.
Meantime, she is trying to remember anybody he spoke of recently. The police took his cell phone and there is no way of knowing who the others are or were in his life.
==
So, how's by you? How are all the people you know on the edges of your life?
Don't blink.
I'm just saying.
Now I lift my glass.
Joe(He was a traveling mercy.)Nation
@Joe Nation,
Quote:He was always just a little ill, a little in pain, a little slowed up from all the pressures of trying to piece together a not all together life.
Ah Joe. I'm sorry.
I'm sorry he couldn't get more of those pieces together before dying much too young.
Sometimes when all the pieces aren't in place, life beats a body down.
Sorry for your loss Joe.
Life is a struggle at the best of times IMO and we're all always fighting to keep our heads up in one respect or another. Some us are lucky and should always stop to say "There but for the grace of God go I" when we think of those who never quite got it together. I have many "on the edge of my life" friends who came up living hard and never settled down, and it shows and some of them are gone because of it. None of them lived as hard as me and I'm doing well so I perfectly understand what you're talking about. Glass raised to your friend and to you Joe, for your thoughtfulness and obvious caring.
@Bi-Polar Bear,
Remember , you too are considered "edge material" in someone elses life Bear.
My life is full of edges as embayments and peninsulas , so My edges arfe always being redefined as new folks come and go. I have a similar "goto" guy who was always the craftsman of choice when someone needed some extra special woodwork done in homes that a number of my neighbors live in (these are all several hundred year old flops). His name was Glenn (yes, past tense is what we seem to be concrned with).
My last job with Glenn, was a set of repro shelves that we had constructed out of old window passages where a new addition was added onto an old one at our house. I always pass thye woordwork and plaster and marvel at how good he was.
He was helping another neighbor take in a hay field before a thunderstorm kicked up. He was driving a thrike tractor back to the barn with a big overloaded hay wagon on the drwabar. He turned a corner and the hay wagon upset and pulled the tractor over. He was thrown clear but the tractor had a ROPS (roll over bar0 that was fit into the old seat area. This big metal rollbar landed on him and crushed his chest before anyone could get to him. He died like he lived , fitting it in between assignments.
Lots of such people in my life. One of the more recent, were the Campbells. This retired old couple that kept Campbell Soup advertising signs and cans about the apartment. His cancer and alzheimer's became more and more pronounced. As she took care of him, her own health was in decline. We found her doubled over in pain in the office once. When she lay in a hospital bed, following surgery, he went out the door. Police asked him if he were all right. He was incoherent, but told them his address. He ended up home, telling me, "I don't know where my wife is." They died, just seven days apart, around Easter time.
@farmerman,
farmerman wrote:
Remember , you too are considered "edge material" in someone elses life Bear.
My life is full of edges as embayments and peninsulas , so My edges arfe always being redefined as new folks come and go. I have a similar "goto" guy who was always the craftsman of choice when someone needed some extra special woodwork done in homes that a number of my neighbors live in (these are all several hundred year old flops). His name was Glenn (yes, past tense is what we seem to be concrned with).
My last job with Glenn, was a set of repro shelves that we had constructed out of old window passages where a new addition was added onto an old one at our house. I always pass thye woordwork and plaster and marvel at how good he was.
He was helping another neighbor take in a hay field before a thunderstorm kicked up. He was driving a thrike tractor back to the barn with a big overloaded hay wagon on the drwabar. He turned a corner and the hay wagon upset and pulled the tractor over. He was thrown clear but the tractor had a ROPS (roll over bar0 that was fit into the old seat area. This big metal rollbar landed on him and crushed his chest before anyone could get to him. He died like he lived , fitting it in between assignments.
I'm considered edge material in general by most of the world... which is why I can empathize with Joe and his friend....
It would be interesting, shocking in some cases, to find out who considers each one of us a person on the edge of their lives. People who you only see at the local diner whom you nod at because they were at some Lions Club meeting ten years ago or the couple who used to be neighbors when your children were little and now live across town.
Joe(Didn't I used to know your brother-in-law?)Nation
@Joe Nation,
You are on the edges of my life because I dont even know whether you exist or whether you are the product of some very intelligent machines efforts at communication. I seek out your views and then move on, safe in the knowledge that if you are a machine, at least you dont seem to pose a threat to life on this planet.
FARMER(I would like a time machine for Christmas)MAN
@Joe Nation,
Joe, this thread is thoughtful and lovely and dignified, if bittersweet, and contrary to remaining on the edge of my psyche, it infuses it, in ways both subtle and apparent. I thank you for it.
Raises glass to Janos.
Grocery store clerks...
One of the highlights of my father's week was going to the grocery store. He got to flirt with his favorite checkout clerks and they flirted right back. Not too long ago I was standing in line at the checkout and overheard the clerk saying something to the customer in front of me about not seeing so-and-so for a very long time. The customer informed her that so-and-so had passed away. When I got to the front of the line I told her about my father. She said that it was true for lots of the older folks (particularly the men) and that they would oftentimes simply stop coming to the store. She said, "And, of course, no one ever thinks to let us know, but we miss them too."
@JPB,
That is sweet JPB...we often forget these people - not purposely. I have often thought about this concept. I want to care for all the people in my life well...but I get overwhelmed when I think about it!
Best thing I can think to do is give them my full attention and care while I am with them. I have a tendency to try to do it all and end up tossing it all in the air...can't give up though. Full attention to "this person" in "this moment" - then to the next...no regrets. I hope...I cannot grasp it well for some reason.
@Joe Nation,
JoeNation wrote:It would be interesting, shocking in some cases, to find out who considers each one of us a person on the edge of their lives.
My sister studied architecture at the same, rather small university in Hamburg, Germany where Mohammed Atta studied electrical engineering (I think). Since they studied there at the same time, and since the universiy isn't
that big, chances are good that they saw each other in the cafeteria at least once during those years. When my sister found that out, it definitely put some more edge into the edge of her life.
***
On a different note -- sorry about your loss, Joe. Things like this suck.
@JPB,
I get this post in many ways, for myself and others, and the clerks, who are more me than they might guess. Some are semi-hemi friends.
In fact, grocery store check outs may be a near last bastion of humanity talking. I dread it all being digitalized.
I am on the edge of many peoples lives.
I lost a long time client the other day because of changes in her income .
During the course of the conversation, she was 'checked out' thinking about something else .. and not really present. .. until the moment when she was thanking me for being with her.
She stopped.
stared at me and said.. Wow. It has been THAT many years?
The look on her face was .. I dont know.. A surprise? A nice surprise?
Here in the city (New York is always referred to as The City, as if no other metropolitan area even exists. heh.) it's not only grocery checkout people interacting with the larger populace, it's also the bus drivers, the owner of the bodega or the deli guy on the corner and, holy cow --- they still exist! --- the local cop on the beat.
Those are the people who are most aware of all of the characters in the city-play. And they are the ones who first notice that they haven't seen Mrs. So-and-so lately, or, more likely, since names are seldom exchanged, that the fellow who carries the yellowish cane hasn't been to breakfast in four days, or maybe it's the lady who wears the flowered hat day-in day-out all year seems not to have any need of a Daily News since last Sunday. What's up with that?
I've seen this many times. A person,who has been on vacation for two weeks, walks into the bagel shop and the usually surly, overworked counterman beams........
"Hey, there you are! Where you been???"
There is a familiarity that is at once pushed back and embraced.
Everyone in the city wants to be well known and anonymous simultaneously.
Joe(It is so nice to be missed.)Nation
Wonder what it says about me that the neighbours on the edge I suddenly miss tend to be canine? (Thanks for the topic, Joe.)
I posted a reply to this on FB, but somehow it got lost. Oh well...
When my mother died, my sister and brother made all the expected efforts to contact the relatives and close friends. They thought I was wasting my time contacting people like her cleaning person and (especially) her hairdresser. She had seen the same hairdresser (old fashioned word, intentionally used) every week for more than 40 years. He cried when I told him. But he thanked me for coming, saying she was much more than just a client after all those years. So many of his older clients just stopped coming, he said, and he never knew what happened.
Often the people on the edges of our lives make a real difference.
@Eva,
Eva wrote:
Quote:Often the people on the edges of our lives make a real difference.
Too true. and the same for Tai's four-legged critters. They add to our lives, add to the variety and color to this time we were are in, bring unexpected differences and news, but only if we allow them in. Sometimes we get so focused on getting to the weekend or whatever that we seal out everything and everyone else.
The odd thing is that the people and dogs we are ignoring may be fully aware of us in their lives. (heh. they are receiving from us and we, in our cocoon, aren't getting anything back.)
There is something special about getting sniffed by a dog and receiving an
"This one's okay. (never has a treat for me, but hey.) Still...okay."
Joe(The feeling is one of relief and belonging.)Nation
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