Quarantine Diary #124 7/17/2020 As if it makes sense …

Our family lost a friend this week. I won’t go into too many details other than Tom died of a bike accident on a sunny day while riding in the country with friends. His wheel somehow got stuck in gravel, he fell, the fall twisted, and he died.

This is not his obituary or eulogy. This is a just a reflection on losing friends and how do we make sense of this?

I have lost three good friends to death in my life. With the other two one knew it was coming though one still expected it was still a long way off. It always seems that way, doesn’t it? In most cases, as long as people are conscious, they are themselves. The say the kinds of things they say. The notice the kinds of thing they have always noticed. They hum or sing under their breath if they have always done that. They make jokes, or are sentimental, or are not. A person stays the person they are up until awfully late in the game. It’s unnerving how robust we are at being who we are.

When someone who has been a friend for a long time passes away nearly instantaneously – it seems impossible. How could Tom be here and then be gone?

The group biking thing started when we moved to Racine. Len and I were in our early 40’s and we knew, boy did we know, it was time to start exercising on purpose. I started walking a lot; Len would go out on his bike after work. Len met neighbors Jack and Steve and soon they were biking together a few hours most Saturday mornings. Around then our daughter became friends with a cute, tall, cheerful 6th grade whippersnapper (they are still BFF’s!). One thing led to another and our families became friends and the whippersnapper’s dad, Tom, joined the biking guys.

The guys sometimes, as a joke, called themselves the Wind Point Democratic Boys’ Bicycle Club. (I think that’s what WPDBBC stands for.)  Off and on other guys would join them for a morning or for a year or two. Len secretly called them (and still does) The Terrible Men because for them he would get up and exercise instead of staying in bed to peruse books about the Civil War.

Jack “made them” sign up for an annual bike marathon that raises money to fight Children’s Cancer; https://maccfund.org/trek-100/ On a Saturday in June they’d join thousands of others to ride about 25-75 miles, depending on the guy and the year. I’m sure over the years the guys raised thousands of dollars. It was their joint adventure that helped the world while honoring their friendship, their love of bike riding, and their humor.

We moved to Waukesha but due to the organizational chutzpah of Jack, Len still rode with The Terrible Men a couple times a year. More often the guys would ride without Len.

…

I was reading Tuesday afternoon when Len walked into the room, his face shocked.

“I have a phone message from Jack. Tom just had an accident and died.”

We stared at each other. This didn’t make sense.

…

That’s it, isn’t it?  It doesn’t make sense. Here we all are, going along, getting up, doing our stuff, taking care of ourselves and others. Going to work and coming back home. Eating, clearing the counter, raising money for good causes, making plans with friends. We use our calendars and the clock in our phone to parse out the day. We call our parents and kids to chat a bit. We take the car to get the tires rotated because it’s time to do that. We join a protest and write a letter to our representatives and try to be better citizens. We read to our grandchildren and go fishing and enjoy a beer or wine now and then.

Our greatest human luxury is to live as if things make sense and there will be enough time. We live by these beautiful lies because without them we are crazy bees without a queen. 

This would be the point where I tell you to more deeply appreciate your life and your people.

But nah, I’m not going to go there. I don’t even know how to do that, 

If you have deep discord in your life, yeah, address that. Don’t throw people away because they are jerks. (Though you can have boundaries and be careful.)

Mostly, keep on living as if no one will fall off their bike, or have a heart attack, or be arrested to death by crap cops, or step backwards off a step or the Grand Canyon into eternity. 

It sucks that Tom died. But he was just living his life and that’s the thing.

And it's rich now to recall some of the ordinary ways we interacted over the years.  I had too many irises and gave him some and I think they are crowded around his house now. He gave our youngest child her childhood nickname. He didn’t like tomato sauce and that flabbergasted me. He loved his family and they loved him. 

I’m going for a walk. It will be a very ordinary walk. It's what we have.