I said good-bye to a fellow I have worked with on and off for over 15 years yesterday.
His wife died last winter, and he has finally decided to move to Florida to live with one of his daughter's families. Lonely. He is in his 80s. Most of his old pals in town that he worked with, grew up with, and worshipped with are dead. A sad farewell for both of us. He gave me a big bear hug. He was never a regular psychotherapy patient, but an irregularly-regular patient when things got tough.
Strong guys are not afraid of getting help when they need it.
I nursed him through panic attacks (cured them easily with medicine), a major depression after his heart attack, a major depression after the death of his wife, the suicide of one of his daughters. In the process, I learned a lot about his life. A lot about life. It is my privilege to learn a lot about life through people's lives. Their stories enrich mine.
Today, he reminisced about his troop ship trip home from England after having been a tail-gunner - a teenager - for a couple of years in WW2 in Italy and France, and finally in Germany. He was based in Dijon for a while. "We got the news about FDR's death on the ship. Some liked him, some hated him, but he was our boss. Ship was half-filled with guys like me headed for furlough, and half-full of POWs. Why, at that point in the war, they were bringing German POWs to the US I have no idea, but the military never makes sense. That's a given when you're in the service. For my furlough, they took me from New York to Massachusetts to Miami to New Jersey before I could get home to Massachusetts. After my month furlough in the local pub, I had to spend three months down in New Jersey to get enough points to qualify for discharge."
"Doing what?" I asked. "Basically, nothing," he said. "They just had to make us wait out our time. The action then was mopping up in the Pacific." He said "It feels so long ago now that it's like another life."
He is a retired mailman who remembers horse-drawn fire trucks, played trumpet in the Volunteer Fire Department marching band for 50 years, and still sings in his RC choir and delivers food to the elderly. "I'm older than most of the people I deliver to." He was the guy who told me that flak on an airplane sounds like "a bucket of gravel being dumped on the fuselage. You get used to it after a while. We all assumed we would die, and got used to that too."
An American fellow to the bone, and one of the finest, humblest, most giving and unselfish people I have ever known. He dedicated his life, and especially his retirement, to being a good companion and to doing unto others in whatever ways he could.
Long life to you, friend, and God bless.
