I’m not sure that I can write well enough to say what I want to say without this devolving into something maudlin and sentimental. If it goes there, please pretend it didn't happen because that’s not my intent at all.
People tell me things. Kent says he’s never seen anyone get strangers to talk about themselves the way I do. I don’t agree with him that I have a particular talent in this area although I do make connections with people and they do tell me things. Everyone has a story and almost everyone wants to tell their stories. Mostly I like making those connections because I’ve talked with a lot of exceptionally interesting people. Conversation like that makes flying go by faster.
Yesterday was one of the rare times I sort of wished I hadn’t started a conversation—although as I think back, I’m pretty sure he would have said what he did anyway. On the flight from Minneapolis to Boston, I got the first class upgrade which was perfect timing for me. It’s a lot easier to sleep in first class than in coach. I think the man in 1C also got an upgrade because he came up from coach. I asked him if he lived in the Minneapolis area (he did), and asked what was taking him to Boston. Business, he said, although it was going to be a very short trip. In fact he was returning on Monday, because he needed to go see his son in the burn unit.
Turns out his son is in the burn unit because he’d gotten notice that the bank was foreclosing on his house. The dad said he flipped out and threw himself onto a fire in the back yard. It took four male fire fighters to pull him off.
I know from personal experience that this recession is really bad and affecting a lot of people. Kent and I have both had long periods of unemployment, I have friends who also need jobs, and my younger son had to sell his house in the Detroit area as a short sale which meant he lost everything he’d put down on the house and also lost money on the improvements they made. But I haven’t talked with someone who has been so affected by the recession in the way this man’s son has. And to make things even more horrible, his other son is also losing a house to foreclosure.
Who knows how or why both sons face financial disasters. All I know is that yesterday I sat next to someone who needed to tell his story. The least I could do was listen.
3 comments:
How very sad. I do wonder if people who are already a bit...unhinged? Is that fair?...are more likely to do something so drastic and dramatic, which only adds to their woes. I have met a lot of people from different walks of life working for non-profits for the last 20 years and I have found that there are people to whom a series of bad things happen and there are people to whom they don't. Awful things happen but I think it's how you handle them that matters more in the long run. Very sad.
And I don't mean to downplay the times we live in and the fact that there is massive unemployment and foreclosures. But, to heap insult on injury seems tragic.
That was my (unspoken to him) thought too. Some of us were born more resilient than others, which isn't fair but seems to be true regardless.
I also wondered and didn't ask what the son hoped to accomplish by burning himself. It's hard to imagine he could have successfully killed himself that way but who knows how well his thought process was working.
Sometimes people just want to do something dramatic. I find that when I get in that mode I do something that I'd swear was accidental, like sprain an ankle or get a migraine.
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