I’m not sure how to tie any of this together.
Tonight on a group text a friend said he was drinking too much and hated life and was too much of a pussy to end it with a gun in his mouth and hopes his liver gives out. He texted the cry-laughing emoji and wished everyone a crappy new years. Not knowing how to take this and always one to dive into dark humor I made a reference to hipsters not knowing how to do anything right, and that in my day we knew the value of a good knot and sturdy rafters. I can be wickedly morbid. That’s when he told everyone that he’s in the late stages of cirrhosis (not from alcoholism). I immediately texted him and said if he’s dealing with stuff, he should talk to someone (begged him to talk to someone), and said he’s welcome to come visit if he wants to get away. No answer. I texted someone else in the group who said he recently found out about it and that the mutual friend may have a year or so left – he was sworn to secrecy and didn’t expect it to come out in the group text, not tonight.
Earlier tonight I went to a bar for a beer and dinner. While sitting there, I reached out to an old friend who is having a tough time. He’s been vague-posting on Facebook – it sounds like he’s getting divorced. I haven’t really talked to him in years, but tonight I wrote to him. Said hey, it sounds like it’s been a rough year – give me a call if you want to talk. He responded right away and is going to call tomorrow. One of my resolutions is to be more compassionate and to not avoid other people’s suffering just because it’s messy or inconvenient or unpleasant or not my place. We are all we have… however loose those threads may be.
The bookstore closed early and I never really got to look through the poetry section. Jane Kenyon will have to wait for another day. I managed to get a book from an author I once knew – The Accidental Buddhist by Dinty Moore. I walked around town and looked at the ice sculptures and went to a bar. At the bar, I talked to the woman next to me. She moved here two years ago and hates it. She thinks she’ll lose her job soon and is just waiting to see what happens. I asked her, why wait? Where would she go if she could? She said Belize. She recognized me from the commercials I’ve been in, but also swore we met at an event. It turns out we sat at the same table at a fundraiser not too long ago. We talked a bit about life and its ups and downs. She mentioned Buddhism and letting go of expectations. I showed her the book I had just bought. We laughed about that. I also talked with a guy who was two seats away – he’s 21 and trying to figure it all out. He’s in college, lives in the Harrisburg area and came to State College hoping to get away. He likes college town life and thinks maybe he could tend bar somewhere. He seems a little lost and like maybe he wants to escape but isn’t sure where.
On my walk home from the bar, I remembered a gift my daughter had gotten one Christmas when she was younger. I think it was a ballerina music box of some sort. She loved the gift and in the short time she had it was always fussing with it or playing with it… within the first night or so she dropped it and broke it. She was so upset about it and I was so torn. We tried to tell her it was fragile and to leave it be, and the disciplinarian in me felt like this was a hard lesson that she needed to learn. All these years later I wonder why we have to learn about fragility through loss. This is the lesson of Lennie and the mouse in Of Mice and Men – he killed it with his affection. She didn’t want to break it…. so few of us do.
I texted the mutual friend, the one who knew about the cirrhosis. I said it’s all so unfair and stupid.
Like I said, I don’t know how to tie any of this together other than I have one friend who is dying and would just as soon get on with it, another who probably feels like he’s dying inside. I met a woman who suspects there’s no point to any of this and I met a kid who’s trying to figure out which way he should go. All of it feels so heartbreakingly honest. Like something we might watch through a kitchen window – flowers in a hailstorm on an otherwise sunny day.