Wisdom in Passing

Sometimes just wisps of things people say, remarks made in passing, stick with me and influence me more than whole tomes of philosophy. Two such throw-away lines have been particularly haunting me lately. One was a mild reprimand issued to my dog decades ago. The other I heard just recently.

The long-ago comment was uttered by an itinerant handyman my mother hired to do odd jobs after my father died. We had a variety of handymen we called on in those disoriented, posthumous days. I’m not sure why we had such a parade of workmen through the house then. My father had been neither handy nor interested in making any repairs about the place, and we seemed to get along without calling in much help. Why suddenly, after my father’s death, did we feel the need to fix leaking faucets, replace broken tiles, etc., etc. Those things had been leaking and broken for years.

Maybe it was because when my father was still around, we felt we had a safety net. If a minor problem should suddenly explode into disaster – there was at least someone else around to psychologically share the fright of it. Now that he was gone, we felt vulnerable to such dire eventualities. So we bestirred ourselves, getting the little things repaired in hopes that we could prevent any of them from mushrooming into catastrophe.

Most of the local handymen available to do odd jobs turned out to be disasters in and of themselves. Some proved to have very limited knowledge about making any repairs. When one undertook to change the washer on a faucet, he didn’t think it was necessary to turn off the water supply to that sink before starting. Water gushed. Unbelievably, another handyman thought the instructions had said to moisten your hands before working on the fuse box. He had somehow failed to see the NOT featured in bold type in all the warnings that preceded how-to instructions on working with electricity. “Do NOT work in standing water or with moist hands or clothing.” Electric shock ensued.

Then there were a couple of lechers whose primary motive for “helping out” had been the access it would afford them to a new, and therefore presumably lonely, yearning widow.

Finally, there were the teenagers whose parents had insisted they earn some money before heading off to college in the fall. The teenagers didn’t want to be working at our house, or anywhere. They wanted to be out having a last dating fling before buckling down to the books. They oozed resentment. One managed to dislodge part of our gutters in his angry, aggressive attempts to clear that gutter of leaves as quickly as possible. So irate was he at having to go back up and reattach the gutter, he slammed the ladder against our building with such force that he smashed our yard light.

However, after all this mishap and mayhem, we did find one reliable workman who knew what he was doing and who went about the jobs in a steady, professional way. His name was the Presidential “John Adams,” and indeed he looked as if he might have been born a New Englander. He was tall and thin, with a somewhat wooden, weathered look, like the figurehead on an old whaling ship. He also had a New England kind of taciturnity and reserve about him. We somehow gathered that he might be a recovering alcoholic who found sketchy lodgings in various shelters.  But he didn’t bring any of his life problems onto the job. Except we did get a glimpse into the hard-scrabble road he must have travelled in that one memorable stone of philosophy he cast in the direction of our dog.

Actually our dog was more of a puppy, or a dog on the cusp between puppyhood and adulthood. During the times we were too distracted elsewhere to keep her strictly in check, she would follow Mr. Adams around, yapping in a mixture of playful eagerness to participate in his energetic doings and of resentment at the intrusion of this obvious interloper.

Mr. Adams took this pesky tag-along in good part for a while. But finally, when the dog’s company threatened to become actual interference, Mr. Adams addressed her directly. “You have to be quiet and go sit by yourself now,” he instructed her. “That’s what growing up is. It’s learning how to be alone.”

The melancholy truth of that hit me. I was a teenager then, but I suddenly knew that he was right. I knew that’s what awaited me. Adulthood was a matter of entering into an essential aloneness. It was a shouldering of responsibility without the likelihood of any true companion to share it. Adulthood would certainly be devoid of the unconditional love some of us know as children. Instead it was a setting sail into a vast ocean - without another soul in sight.

The second piece of wisdom that I’m sure will stick with me was not uttered as an article of philosophy. It was just a casual personal observation. I happened to catch it as part of an interview with Angie Dickinson appearing on CBS’s Sunday Morning Show. Dickinson has largely retired from her career as actress and sex symbol. She has become an avid poker player and challenged her interviewer, Mo Rocca, to a card game. As they played, Dickinson reflected on her life. She felt her years of stardom had been a wonderful adventure. She didn’t mind having been known for her beauty and sex appeal. That had enabled and added to the adventure of it all.

After a little while, the two broke off playing cards. Mo Rocca walked with Dickinson to the balcony of her home to share her spectacular overview of Beverly Hills. After they had gazed together at the rolling vista for a moment, Dickinson gave a slight shrug of contented resignation. She said, “One day I won’t have all this.” (She didn’t inject the word “soon” into her reflection, although, since Dickinson is in her late 80’s now, that hint of soonness hung unspoken in the air.) But she just issued the truth of the matter bare. She said, “One day I won’t have all this…. but I won’t know it.”

She delivered that last line with an air of confiding triumph. Yes, we will all lose everything we have in the end, but we won’t know it. We won’t dwell in that desolation, experiencing it endlessly. Therefore, we can fling back defiantly, “Take that, Death! You’ve done your worst, but I’m not aware of it. So the joke’s on you! Ha HAAA!”

These two wisdoms bookend my own reflection on my span. There was Mr. Adams’ somber view at one end of all the packed activity. But then here came Angie Dickinson’s point – ultimately a happier thought about the other end of it all. She made me realize what a final invictus it will be.