My scars, they are your scars, and your world is mine

That’s my daughter about to ring the doorbell at the home of the mother of her childhood best friend. The best friend died of brain cancer two years ago.

My daughter was nervous. She hadn’t seen her friend or her friend’s mom in ten years. She didn’t know what she was going to say.

Her friend’s mother wasn’t home. Whew.

As my daughter walked away a neighbor across the street asked if she could help. The neighbor said the mom wasn’t there but would be down the street the next day.

My daughter wasn’t sure about going back. Through the window when she was ringing the doorbell she had seen a lift rigged to the stairs and she pictured the mom old and disabled and maybe it would just be too sad for everyone for her to visit. Now she was even more nervous.

She want back anyway. She took her sister. And her own mom, my wife. We all used to be neighbors, but that was 25 years ago.

It was a short, good visit. The mom wasn’t sick or disabled or sad. What a relief. But then she pulled out photos of her daughter’s small child. My daughter didn’t know her friend had any kids. Now THAT was sad. The visitors were sadder than the host. The mom had been through the grieving process. The guests hadn’t.

They held their tears until they left the house with their backs to the door. Then they boo-hoo’d in the car.

Why invite pain? Why invite sadness? The mom will never know if you choose not to knock.

Yes she will

If you knock she gets another little sign that she’s not forgotten and alone. Little signs might be all she has.

You have kids. You imagine how she feels.

YOU don’t want to be forgotten and alone.

So you knock.

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I just noticed two age spots on my hands

When we were teenagers “bombing around” (that’s what we called it) with our friends, my brother sometimes yelled out the car window at senior citizens, “Hey you old bag! You oughta be dead!” Then he’d laugh. He thought he was hilarious.

Today he’s really a good guy. Back then, like all teens, his brain was not fully formed yet.

When you’re growing up it’s easy to think you’re on a different road than your parents, a different road than “old people.”

It’s the same road

Parents and others are just farther down that same road than you. And the farther you go, the more people there are behind you; people who think they’re on a different road.

Somewhere along the road you realize this.

That’s when the catharsis begins. The confrontation with the brutal reality that you’re not an exception. For some it’s too much–you keep the look, the clothes, the hair style. Or you adopt the look, the clothes, the style of those now at the age you refuse to leave behind.

Everybody sees the comb-over but you

Best to embrace this road we’re all on.

Do not despise the era and generation in which the Lord has chosen to give you influence. It’s on purpose. You’ll not pass this way again.

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Everybody carries a pee cup

The nurse steered me into the bathroom and handed me the plastic cup.

“When you get done, put it in the little door over there.”

‘Over there’ was on the wall across the hall from the bathroom. You have to leave the bathroom with your cup.

Great, I just know that as soon as I get done and open the bathroom door, that waiting room door is going to open and the nurse will walk into the hall with someone else and I’ll be standing here with a cup of pee.

That’s exactly what happened

Before I opened the door, I even listened closely for a second to see if all was quiet in the hall. It was. And as soon as I opened the door, the waiting room door opened and we all almost bumped into each other.

“Excuse me,” I said, and we did the awkward “No you go ahead” dance. I almost said, “Hi! This is my pee! That came from inside me! You know, that no one EVER SEES! Until now.”

I didn’t say that. But it’s what I felt. Exposed. Like a big flashing yellow neon arrow was pointing at the cup in my hand.

Then…

I noticed the new patient in the hall had her empty cup in her hand. She was next in the bathroom.

I wasn’t alone.

Every patient in that office—dozens a day—listens at the bathroom door and then walks out into public holding their pee in their hand. And feels alone but isn’t.

Isn’t that how it is?

You try to hide the ‘private’ stuff, the stuff that’s so personal you just know no one else has this, does this, knows this, feels this, experiences this, thinks this, or had this happen to them.

And then for a second you stop thinking of yourself and look down and you see they’re holding a cup of pee too.

You’re so busy walking around trying to hide it that you don’t realize everyone else is trying to hide theirs.

We all just need to fess up

“Hi, this is my stuff I don’t want anyone to see. I see you have yours too. Now can we just move on and stop pretending we can hide?”

Pretending and hiding takes a lot of energy that could go towards other more fun, beneficial things.

You can spread a lot of encouragement with the energy you save by not worrying about hiding what everyone knows anyway.

You’re not alone

I’ll give you grace and you give me grace. I won’t point and laugh at your pee and you don’t laugh at mine.

Now let’s go have a Mountain Dew.

 

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Ask while you can

Tommy was my brother-in-law. He died about 25 years ago. He was a gentle, generous man to my wife, the little sister of his wife.

Tommy was a car salesman all the years I knew him. I had heard he was a boxer in a previous life, but I never asked him about it. I guess it wasn’t interesting to me at the time. I had my own stuff going on, with kids, being unemployed, and all that beer I had to drink.

Recently, we had a big family get-together for a few hours and Tommy’s wife and daughters were there. As we were leaving they brought out a scrapbook the girls created for their mom.

It was filled with clippings and stories and photos of Tommy’s boxing career. Photos with Jack Dempsey. Tommy was a little guy, a Golden Gloves amateur. He lost only 4 of his first 36 fights. He won the California State Featherweight title. He fought in Madison Square Garden, Boston Garden, and the Cotton Bowl.

His family has a gold badge giving them lifetime admission to any Golden Gloves event.

I never knew

I’d love to ask Tommy about that fight with Ricardo Moreno. It was Moreno’s first fight in America, and 6,000 of his fans from Mexico filled the stadium. Another 2,000 were turned away.

What was that like, to have everyone booing you and rooting against you, screaming for another guy to clobber you? What was it like in the dressing room after you lost?

And when you were knocked out in the first round of your last fight, did you know at the time it was your last? Why’d you retire? You were only 24.

I’ll never know

* * *

You don’t have forever to ask questions, to be curious, to care. Things change fast, and when they do it’s permanent. Your chance to make a first-hand connection with someone’s heart, life, and story, evaporates. Instead of a flesh-and-blood, eyeball-to-eyeball encounter with a scene from your family movie, you get to stare at flat yellow clippings in a scrapbook. If there is a scrapbook. Your loss.

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