Despicable Week
His name was Bill, and he meant something.
We weren’t close friends, but I enjoyed Bill’s presence and appreciated his gentle, self-deprecating manner. The last time I saw him, he was walking with a cane, like I do now in the evenings when Jinx and I go for walks. He always had a smile and a shrug and a clear, blue-eyed gaze of friendliness and curiosity. He died a few days ago.
An observant neighbor, noticing that a yard-putterer like Bill hadn’t been outside on a fine, mild November afternoon, went to his door to investigate. She found Bill in his bed, and the medical examiner later determined that he’d been dead for just a few hours.
Bill was married for more than a score of years to the love of his life, a woman who used to say that she loved him so much it scared her, so much that it made her heart go pitty-pat after all those years. Right up until she betrayed him with his best friend, a fellow with close-set, porcine eyes and a weasel’s grin, a fellow who took Bill’s wife right out from under his nose.
Bill’s wife moved in with her new flame and began enjoying the financial largesse that came with the arrangement. No more careful budgeting, no more Walmart shopping, no more humble karaoke Friday nights. No, now it was the big time with a business-owner, a veritable CEO! And while she cavorted with her Judas, Bill sat in the dim little dwelling to which he was forced to retreat. He sat there and drank, and he visited his invalid sister every day — I knew his sister, and she was just as sweet and guileless as BIll — and cared for her and lived his quiet, lonely life, right up until the angel of death walked in and called Bill’s name aloud.
And now? His ex-wife talks about Bill’s death with all the pathos and passion she would infuse into a conversation about hairstyles or drywall or clarinet reeds. No one ever calls her on her…her self. Bill is survived by exactly no living relatives, but has his ex-wife even placed an obituary in the local paper? Well…..too much trouble, it seems. Those outside a small circle don’t even know he has departed this life. Bill’s remains will be disposed of by…someone. And his ex-wife will continue running up large credit bills at the Home Depot as she remodels yet another room in her adulterous rodent’s house, and she will continue acting as if she barely knew Bill, and Bill’s memory will be all but expunged from the face of the earth, and it will be as if he never lived, never drew a breath, never helped a friend, never stroked an affectionate hand across a woman’s face, never made a friend chuckle, never enjoyed a fine meal, never played a favorite rock & roll album, never told a good joke, never did anything except sit in a dusty room and pine his years away while the love of his life played her murderous little fantasies out with Bill’s former best friend.
This has been a bad week so far. I have been forced to deal with some truly despicable people, and I have been wronged, and some things have been damaged that can never be put right. I have retreated each evening to my little farm, where my lovely and virtuous and faithful wife has comforted me and provided perspective for me. And the situation with Bill and his death has sickened me, sickened me because it is such a despicable situation.
There are some things I will never understand.
It is bone-chillingly cold tonight, with a raw, merciless wind slicing through the hills and hollows here. The stars are over me like witnesses, and the leafless branches through which they peek are asking questions, and who am I to attempt answers? I have seen my own betrayals this week, but they are but patches and withered scraps when compared to what Bill endured, what he lived, what he knew, what he choked down, what he went, knowing and in pain, down into his unmourned grave.
My wife and I have prayed for you with fond anguish, with bitter hope, with shaky confidence, ever since we learned the news of your death from the casual lips of your preoccupied ex-wife, Bill. We will continue to pray for the repose of your soul, and for many good things for you and your dear, dear sister who preceded you in death.
And me? I will pray, secretly and quietly and away from all ears and eyes, for some other things. I will watch the cosseted face of the woman who took those vows those decades ago and I will see if any cracks appear.
I do not have it in me to be noble, or virtuous, or pious. Such things are goals, but at this time, while they are so far out of reach for me, they remain masks, costumes, affectations. Fantasies.
What I do have within me is a warm, watchful, patient desire for justice. Will I see the despicable and weak woman receive the cold bauble she’s been playing for all this time? I do not know.
But my desire to see her slam into the wall of consequences is real and alive. This desire means something.
And Bill meant something. He meant something to many of us. What a pity that the world he left behind is so cold and wind-whipped and tolerant of the wrong things.
Rest in peace, Bill. May we meet again on cold, clear slopes, with swords in our hands and weary enemies running from us in the valleys below.
~ S. K. Orr
8 Comments
Brian
I agree with Sean. I love that last sentance also. I’m stealing it.
admin
Very kind of you, Brian…thank you, sir. Steal away!
Sean G.
It’s been heartbreaking reading some of your posts this week, I’m sorry it’s been so despicable. More reminders that no matter how nice our days can be, this is not heaven.
Your last sentence is one of the best I’ve ever read and worth carving into stone.
admin
Thank you, Sean. I’m not as despondent as you might think. I just tend to put my predominant feelings down on the page whenever I start a post. Glum, yes. Honest, yes. But I”m here, and I enjoy most of it. I just have to ask my questions, and my blog is a handy vehicle for those questions.
Thank you for the extremely kind comment about the last sentence of the post. My hope that Heaven is actually more like Valhalla than the clouds & harps scene grows stronger each day.
Bookslinger
There are at least 3 sides to every divorce: his side, her side, and the truth.
I’ve known at least three situations where the wife was so badly emotionally abused, but few people actually saw it (even the kids didn’t recognize it because it was the “normal”, and always her “fault”) that the wife took on a lover to flee to and protect her. There’s more to the psychology of control and abuse that can’t be covered in a mere blog comment. But even pastors and “pillars of the community” can be absolute monsters in the four walls of their homes.
I saw it in high school where some girls always lined up a new boyfriend to protect her from the abusive ex that she was about to break up with.
I’m not saying this was Bill’s case, but just that if you never saw the two of them interact in private, then, as Paul Harvey would say, there is a “rest of the story.”
Sometimes, wives don’t even try to explain because they fear no one would believe that their “pillar of the community” husband could be so monstrous, so emotionally toxic.
On another tack… the world is full of Eleanor Rigbys, all the lonely people. I see a lot of them. I try to be uplifting when I can.
Sometimes a smile and a head-nod, just acknowledging their existence can be a boost. Or a simple greeting in their native language. (I taught myself a few words in several languages.)
My favorite lifter-upper is offering free KJV Bibles and free copies of the Book of Mormon in foreign languages. And it’s not just about proselyting. A physical gift goes way beyond a polite word and a nod.
More than once, a free Bible had the effect of totally changing the countenance and posture of a forlorn looking person waiting at a bus stop.
A morose and dejected cashier at Walmart transformed when I merely said “Thank you” in Hindi.
Find your song, SK. Find your “schtick.” And look out for the next Bill, or Eleanor Rigby. And be a lifter-upper.
I know there can be a danger of needy people getting clingy and dragging you down, like a drowning person on a lifeguard. I’ve been there. So it’s okay to keep boundaries and set limits. A few “tokens” here and there can have more effect than seemingly grand efforts that end up fruitless/wasteful.
God has blessed you will observation skills.
admin
Thank you, Bookslinger, for your comment, your insights, and your encouragement. I appreciate you.
Brian
In my former job, I worked with a lot of young guys. Whenever one of them announced that they were engaged, the usual wisecracks were made about the obvious idiocy of getting married. As a happily married guy, I tried to defend the idea of marriage. My “checkmate” line was: “don’t listen to the bachelors, when they die the body will be discovered by the smell coming from the decaying corpse”.
I’ll give you another story which requires me to reveal that I am a retired fireman:
I got to work early one morning to an empty station house, the guys from the night shift, who I would be relieving, soon returned from a medical call. I could see that they had a doozy of an incident by the looks on their faces.
Apparently they went to a report of a possible heart attack. The patient was an elderly male. His wife was in the room with him. While the firemen were taking the man’s vitals he suddenly glared at his wife, with real hatred, and said “you win”. He immediatly stopped breathing. Attempts at cpr and defibrilation were ineffective. The lieutenant who told the story was particularly blown away by what he witnessed.
Of course, the usual “gallows humor” took over and we had a bit of a laugh at this episode. The story stuck with me though.
I might choose Bill’s lonely plight over the bitter death from my story…. given the choice.
admin
Thank you, Brian. What an interesting — and grim — anecdote. I agree. I’d much rather die like Bill than like the old man.
The gallows humor is a most fascinating thing to witness, especially in one’s self. As a Marine, my world was saturated with it. But as time went on, I found it increasingly tiresome, then unpleasant, then absolutely repulsive. I understand its mechanics and origins, and it does make tense situations easier to endure. It seems reflexive and ubiquitous in American society today…anytime anything happens of an unpleasant nature, you can hear peoples’ minds whirling, trying to be the first one who comes up with a snarky gallows humor quip.
More and more, I am unsure how to process or understand the things I witness in this life. Sometimes I get a brief glimpse of how and why people go mad. So much banal cruelty and evil in a setting of such beauty and sublime construction.