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.
