Fade to Black

Fade to Black

The Grim Reaper was active again last week in my circle of friends and family. We all knew he was in the neighborhood for quite some time, maybe for as long as a year or two we'd seen him skulking about. He'd been sharpening his scythe and keeping a hungry eye on a friend of mine. Last Friday his waiting was over and he harvested another soul. And even though most of his family and close friends knew this was going to happen, it did come as a shock. You go along in life, becoming accustomed to a friend being sick, even with a terminal sickness. Your mind accepts this state of affairs as status quo and you go on, expecting the friend to somehow remain in his present state for a long, long time. Maybe the word should be hoping rather than expecting.

But a terminal disease is named so for a reason, and we all know what that reason is.

Please note that during this blog I'll attempt to refrain from using last names. Since I have no permission to use them, I'll stick to first names. If you're aware of the circumstances you'll know who the people are. If not, it'll just be a story about someone. Just a story. Except for one last name which I will use. You'll see it later on and may understand why I used it.

Let's start this sad story now, shall we?

I took a job many years ago for a telephone company in Hudson, Ohio, as a mainframe computer operator. After working in the smallish computer room at their headquarters for a few years they decided that the facilities were too limited and they would have to expand. The company, instead of building new, bought a large bakery some miles to the north, demolished the building down to the girders and rebuilt it as a regional data center. This operation took somewhat over a year. When the building was very near complete, we computer operators were moved to the new building. The “powers that be” had decided to complete the new computer room first, then finish the rest of the building somewhat later. Due to that, when we reported for work the next day we were routed through the warehouse area instead of the uncomplete main lobby, and our id's were checked and verified by a security guard.

And that was the first time I met Jeff.

He was a young man at that time, barely out of his teens if my calculations are correct. I believe the company providing security at that new data center and for whom Jeff worked was Pinkerton. Jeff sat there at a temporary desk wearing the blue uniform shirt and badge identifying him as the security guard that first day. He examined all our id's as we passed him and waved us through into the new facility. That would be our procedure for some weeks to come as the construction of the rest of the building continued. Finally it was done and the security guards were moved to the front lobby and began manning the receptionist's desk there. However, the security guards were relegated only to the off-shifts, second and third. During first shift the front desk was occupied by a receptionist who answered and forwarded calls for the building and performed what security tasks that were necessary on that shift. Jeff was placed on third shift for the data center at that time and that is where he remained for the next almost three decades.

To be honest, I had little dealings with him for perhaps the first decade of his employment at that facility. I'd see him in the mornings I worked day shift when I arrived and might have spoken to him for a minute or so. When I was moved to second shift I'd see him toward the end of my shift and we might have talked a bit then too. There were also several periods of my tenure there where it was my lamentable chore to work third shift. (I always hated thirds.) During those time periods I really made friends with Jeff. We had numerous periods of time when the work was slack when we could talk at length. And we also conversed during our middle-of-the-night meals. (Did I mention before I hated thirds?) I learned some of what made him tick and he was perhaps entertained from time to time by my chit-chat also. We both liked to write a bit and would occasionally let each other critique what we were working on. He was a big fan of the pulps and loved writing crime drama for the fanzines

We both had a mutual friend named Mike, another operator, who was a bit closer to Jeff as they were both third-shifters. Mike also started doing some social activities with him around this time. I was invited not too long afterward to join them for some of the outings they had been enjoying.

Now, gentle reader, be advised that I'm going to relate some stories of a few of those outings I enjoyed with Mike and Jeff. Be aware that we didn't go to tea parties or sewing bees or any other G-rated activities. Our outings consisted of visiting a number of bars, taverns and strip clubs in and about the Akron Metro area. If you think you aren't up for some R-rated tales of those evenings, you might want to skip ahead a ways.

I remember the first time I got invited by Mike and Jeff to join them for an outing on the upcoming weekend. On that Saturday night we met at Jeff's house, got into my car and joined a few other friends of Jeff's heading down the road to a place called The Nest. I was pretty naïve then as to the kind of place it was, but I was quickly educated when I entered. As an aside, Ohio has some quirky laws. At that time and, I think still, a bar that served alcohol was not permitted to have totally nude dancers. Only topless was permitted. Places that had nude dancers were not able to sell alcohol and therefore were called juice bars as they could serve anything else other than liquor.

The Nest was one of those so-called juice bars.

We entered the nondescript building and paid our admissions to a burly, tattooed gentleman behind a window who took our entrance fees and gave us membership cards. They were only good for that day. Another Ohio law work-around I think. Or maybe it was only a stamp on the arm? Can't really remember. The entrance to the club proper was through another door and through it you emerged at an upper level, a second-story balcony if you will, circular and going all around the stage which was a story below. The dancer pole (and there was ALWAYS a dancer pole in places like that) extended from the stage and up to the second story ceiling where we were. We could either stay up there and watch the dancers below us or go down some stairs and join the guys sitting around the stage. We descended down to the stage level and watched the show. Each dancer had a certain amount of time to strip and to entice customers to put money in her garter – the only clothing she normally kept on. And so it went for the time we were there, a succession of ladies “doing their thing.” A large group of college men were also there that night and they were very definitely enjoying themselves.

I noticed that Jeff and Mike seemed to be watching me more than the girls for part of that night. They later explained that they were getting a kick out of the fact that I'd never been to a place like that and were watching the expression on my face. I think I might have surprised them a little by being a “cool customer” and acting like I'd seen this sort of activity many times before. But of course that was a fabrication as my idiotic grin plainly demonstrated.

And that was one time. Other times we would go to a “normal” bar first that had dancers and stay there the whole night, watching them dance and go topless. Dreamers and The Back Bar come to mind as two we frequented. The Back Bar got closed later as a public nuisance. That always made me smile for some perverse reason as it was one of our favorites. Of course we would have a few drinks also besides watching the girls. And then a few more. On even other times we'd start out at a bar with alcohol then, after some numbers of drinks, adjourn to a juice bar to top off the evenings. At a lot of those earlier outings one of Jeff's best friends accompanied us. His name was Bobo. I thought that was his nickname when I first heard it, but found out later that it was his real last name. Bobo was about 400 pounds of mostly muscle and around 6 foot 3 inches tall, a giant black man who strongly resembled Rosie Greer if you can recall that name. (New York Giants football star.) We all liked Bobo as we knew that for as long as he was with us we could go into almost any bar and not worry about getting into any trouble. Troublemakers took one look at him and eased away.

On a couple other occasions Jeff would host a bachelor party for one of his soon-to-be-wed friends. He'd hire some strippers to come in and would provide a choice of drinks for the attendees. Those parties were always well attended!

There was a story floating around of Jeff's bachelor party itself. Mike had been invited but I was not “in the circle of friends” just then and missed it. Apparently it was the mother of all parties, a monumental blowout.

I still regret not being there!

During the last decade or so, as Jeff and the rest of us aged a bit, the nights out having “fun” as previously described decreased. We found we were more interested in gabbing about our lives and talking about our other interests than actually paying too much attention to the strippers. And boozing that heavily required much more time to recover from.

Eventually we just stopped altogether. See, I told you the story was sad.

Our wives weren't always left in the lurch either. There were any number of times we all went out to eat, then adjourned to a comedy club or perhaps to the University of Akron for a presentation of some sort. Once was when Ray Bradbury was in town and we went to see him. Another was when the two “Mythbusters” guys, Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman gave a talk about their show. There were a bunch of us who attended that one. Other times we went to one of the comedy clubs and had an enjoyable evening, drinking pitchers of Long Island Ice Teas and laughing at the comics.

When I was downsized from the telecommunications company a dozen years ago where we all worked, a lot of this stopped. It was more difficult to schedule times for all of us to get together and so we drifted a bit apart. I realized this at some point about 6-7 years ago and felt bad about it. So I contacted Jeff and Mike to see if they'd be up for a lunch from time to time, to reacquaint ourselves with each other and to catch up on what was happening in our lives. It was amenable to them, so we started scheduling a lunch every couple of months. It was generally at an Indian restaurant or a Mexican one, both close to where Jeff lived in Akron. Mike would generally take a day vacation to join us and I'd catch the guys on my way to work. (I was back to work at a second-shift job in a city west of Akron) It was nice seeing each other and we'd generally commandeer a table in our restaurant of choice and yammer on and on at each other until we were kicked out or I had to vamoose off to work.

That was the situation until about a year or so ago.

At a lunch during that time Jeff dropped the bombshell on us that he'd been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma – a type of leukemia. I'm not sure what the odds were for him at that time, I'm sure he probably told us, but they were not tremendously good. I don't believe he told us what stage the disease was in when they found it or what specific kind of NHL he had, but seeing the progression over time it obviously was not one of the good kinds. I believe he started with some sort of drug therapy, then went the full chemo route with the accompanying hair loss and all. Finally they tried the stem cell into the bone marrow business.

It all pretty much didn't work.

We continued having our lunches, more often than before considering the weakening of Jeff as his disease progressed. He was almost always, at least at the lunches, upbeat, and could joke about how his life had changed. One story he told with a twinkle in his eye was this: he'd bumped into someone in the hallways at work one day and the man had remarked how good he looked, how much weight he'd lost and just how the heck had he done this miracle. Jeff had replied, “I got blood cancer.” Apparently the man had blanched and apologized profusely. Talk about putting your foot in your mouth!

Jeff thought it was kinda funny. He was that sort of guy.

As the days passed Mike and I could see Jeff fading, growing weaker and skinnier each time we'd see him. He could still joke around a bit, but was growing quite fatalistic about his chances. He'd talk about how he was dying and the things he still had left to do before the end overtook him. He was well aware of the few days he had left.

On our last lunch together he came with his wife, Ruth. She was driving and helped him get from the car to the restaurant. They could only stay an hour as they had to get to the hospital where Jeff would receive another blood transfusion. The transfusions were about the only things keeping him going. He was noticeably in worse shape that day and we tried to keep the conversation lighter and more about the “good ol' days” rather than the bleak ones immediately ahead.

That was the last time I saw Jeff alive.

Five weeks later Mike and I received word that Jeff had passed away. He'd been in a hospice and had expired from a heart attack that very day.

We'd been more than halfway expecting this notification, hell, anytime in the past six months wouldn't have surprised us at all, but the fact of his passing still hit like a blow to the gut. Jeff had been a piece of our history for over 30 years and it was so tough accepting that his part in our combined story was now over.

Jeff's viewing and services were as most of these thing normally are: lots of tears and smiles, hugs and long looks, a few friends and many, many people you don't know. Jeff had a big family, lots of siblings, cousins, nephews and nieces and a lot of friends who Mike and I were unfamiliar with. That was no surprise. If it had been one of us instead of him, he wouldn't have known hardly any of our present friends or any of our families. In any event there were a lot of people there. We chatted with Ruth, his wife, a few minutes, expressing our condolences. Ruth stated that Jeff had been a “tough guy” in how he'd stood up to the disease for so long.

We agreed.

On the way home afterward I chatted with my wife about what we'd seen. We smiled at the cards that were there for the attendees that said “In loving memory of Jeff” along with his birth and death dates. On the back of each card was a Batman symbol. Jeff was a huge fan of the comics and was a connoisseur of the superheros – Batman, Superman, Spiderman and all the others. He knew more about them than any grown man probably should have. It was one of his true passions and he passed it along to his twin sons, Nick and James. There was even a flower arrangement in the Batman symbol shape!

I wondered also on that long drive home what Jeff himself might have thought about the scene at the funeral home, whether he might have been happy to see so many people show up or whether he'd have liked to have “taken care of business” more quickly, with less people and have it done and over with. I also like to think he'd have been happy to see a couple of his ol' pals show up to say adios.

So the story of my friend Jeff is over. No more will he tell us what TV shows he saw recently that he really enjoyed or what politician had said something that annoyed him. No longer will he share stories of things done, memorable meals eaten, celebrity autographs obtained, movies he was anticipating and new comics he'd enjoyed.

I'll miss that. I'll miss the shock of his brown hair that inevitably ended up almost obscuring his right eye. I'll miss his enthusiasm for life and his freely acknowledged love for his wife Ruth and his two boys.

I'll miss all that.

And I'll remember him often.