The Secret

“...Yossarian was cold, too, and shivering uncontrollably. He felt goose pimples clacking all over him as he gazed down despondently at the grim secret Snowden had spilled all over the messy floor. It was easy to read the message in his entrails. Man was matter, that was Snowden’s secret. Drop him out a window and he’ll fall. Set fire to him and he’ll burn. Bury him and he’ll rot, like other kinds of garbage. That was Snowden’s secret. Ripeness was all.”

—Joseph Heller, “Catch 22”

Here’s what I know:

Sometime after midnight while we were on some bullshit medical run, I heard dispatch tone out an engine for a single-vehicle traffic collision with fire on a freeway onramp in our first-in. It would have been our call, if we hadn’t already been on this band-aid run, so the other other unit got it.

Maybe a half an hour later, after we were back in quarters and trying to get back to sleep, we got toned out to the scene of the car fire. They needed a truck company to extricate a body. Turns out it was a fatality fire.

When we pulled up, there were half dozen CHP cruisers blocking the intersection, and the county arson investigator’s unmarked pick-up. Fifty feet up the now-closed ramp was the burned out shell of a compact sedan. Highway patrol officers stood around indifferently, waiting.

Seems there were a lot of unanswered questions: What caused this late-night single-car accident on a relatively remote onramp? Why did this car that sustained seemingly minimal damage from collision show such heavy fire damage? Although the engine compartment showed little signs of char, the passenger space had clearly been fully engulfed—an unusual pattern. Was an accelerant used? Was the victim murdered and his car then deliberately set on fire?

No one wanted to claim jurisdiction. Local PD dumped it off on CHP and left the scene; CHP was now trying to pawn it off on our county sheriffs. While unseen chief officers on the other end of crackling police radios and cell phones dickered, we climbed off the rig and met up with our arson investigator.

He explained that after the cops sorted out jurisdiction and the corner’s van arrived, our crew would have to cut the car apart and get the body out. So we ambled up the ramp to size up our task and peered inside the blackened sheet metal.

I’ve seen my share of dead bodies—from infants to old people—and even some burned ones. But this was different.

The driver’s seat was just a black wire frame now, but slumped deep into this outline was a charcoal-colored heap; there were no discernable body parts. No ghastly silhouette of a head, torso, and extremities. Instead, just an ungathered mass, spilled out like some terrible secret.

In terms of extrication, it would be routine: Either spread the door, or cut the A and B posts to flap back the roof. It would only take a few minutes to give the coroner full access.

But it soon became clear that it was going to be a while before decisions were made, so the arson investigator sent us back to our home quarters. He’d call us back out when we were needed.

But he never did.

Later the next morning the intersection was clear.

Like so many calls I’ve been on these past 17 years, I never learned what happened—either before or after the event

—or why.

But for a few moments in the middle of an otherwise nameless night, 

I was called out to witness one small, grim piece 

of some larger, unfathomable mystery.

Celebrity

"No man is an Island, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine… any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee."

—John Donne

The Grammys, The Oscars, The Emmys, The Tonys, People’s Choice, Golden Globes, American Music Awards, BET, CMAs…

Celebrities certainly do like to celebrate themselves. Can you think of any other occupation so preoccupied with itself? Can you imagine if other professionals possessed the same level of self-congratulatory hubris?

“And now accepting the award for Best Junior Account Executive…”

Cue adulatory applause.

Pop culture assures its celebrities that their lives are extraordinary, special. And if their lives are so significant, so must be their deaths.

Last night, someone texted me that Whitney Houston died. I thought, “How much should I care?”

Now don’t get me wrong: I’m sure she was a beautiful person. I assume that in this world she faced her share of challenges, took satisfaction in her accomplishments, and was no stranger to personal tragedy and loss. In other words, she was just like the rest of us. But having a three-octave range is no more of an achievement than graduating vocational school. (Perhaps Houston leveraged her considerable wealth and influence for charitable or humanitarian causes, but its not mentioned in any of the late-breaking news reports I’ve seen so far.)

Everyday, decent, hard-working, selfless people die anonymous deaths—their passing barely noted by anyone save a few close family members. My job has brought me into an uncomfortable proximity with this cold fact.

Poet John Donne once wrote eloquently of the immutable connection we humans share, our interdependence upon each other. Everyone matters. But Hollywood has subverted that noble truth: In today’s culture, no one matters except the very beautiful and famous.

Tonight’s award program will feature an unabashed celebration of Ms. Houston, I’m sure. Perhaps fans will hold a candlelight vigil, or place teddy bears and roses on the sidewalk in front of the Beverly Hilton. But such outpouring has always given me a certain existential dysphoria.

By idolizing the one, we diminish the “all.”

Mom, February 3, 1935-April 13, 1990

She was driving that little red hatchback to a routine appointment when she started feeling dizzy, and pulled over. A few hours later she was sitting upright in a hospital bed, having just learned that the afternoon’s scans and tests revealed she had brain tumor.

Surgery, radiation, chemo. It did little to slow the inexorable progression of a high-grade astrocytoma.

She had sent six kids through Catholic school. Her mothering skills were a deft combination of pediatrician, short-order cook, janitor, cab driver, party planner, and armchair psychiatrist. She wasn’t perfect, of course; what mother is? But she had spent years wrestling with the demons of her own past—an estranged father and overbearing mother—and struggling chronic, debilitating health problems, all while raising six kids of her own. The life had left her exhausted and understandably high-strung.

But now she had finally begun to relax. She took satisfaction in watching an elder son marry, just as her youngest daughter was transitioning into young adulthood. At last she could sit back and savor years of hard work like a maturing fine wine.

Until that afternoon in December cut everything short.

Sixteen months later, I stood at her bedside in a nursing home, clutching her frail hand. The hallways reeked of industrial-grade antiseptics, bland institutional food, and stale urine. She held me with a vacant gaze—did she still recognize her middle son?

Later that night, the ringing phone by my bedside startled me from a dreamless sleep. A call that we had all come to expect, come to accept.

Sometimes it's hard not to fixate on those days and nights.

But when the weather turns cool, and gray clouds blanket the winter sky…

I’m pulled back in time to that little home in a small town in upstate New York…

…a warm amber glow emanates from the kitchen, the sounds of pots and pans clattering, the sweet smell of supper made from scratch…

and I am once again

(and forever)

…her little boy

When I Look at the World...

“When you look at the world
What is it that you see?
People find all kinds of things
That bring them to their knees...

When there's all kinds of chaos
And everyone is walking lame
You don't even blink now, do you
Or even look away…

I'm in the waiting room
Can't see for the smoke
I think of you and your holy book
While the rest of us choke…

So I try to be like you
Try to feel it like you do
But without you it's no use
I can't see what you see
When I look at the world…

Tell me, tell me, what do you see?
Tell me, tell me, what's wrong with me”

(“When I Look at the World,” lyrics by U2)

Gary Cieslak...January 30, 2009

After we knew he was sick, but before the worst of the symptoms would soon enough appear, Gary slid into the driver’s seat of his compact SUV and looked across at me. The mischievous grin, I knew, signaled that whatever was to come next was intentional, as he pushed a dull silver disc into the waiting CD player on the dash and pulled away from the curb.

Springsteen’s plaintive acoustic guitar and lonely harmonica conjured up the ghost of old Hank Williams. I’d heard the song before, but never really paid attention to the lyrics. Now as we drove down the tree-lined streets of Boise’s North End, I knew right away that the words were meant for me.

Funny…

I would have said the same things of Gary:

“Well they built the Titanic to be one of a kind,

but many ships have ruled the seas

They built the Eiffel Tower to stand alone,

but they could build another if they please

Taj Mahal, the pyramids of Egypt, are unique I suppose

But when they built you, brother, they broke the mold

Now the world is filled with many wonders

under the passing sun

And sometimes something comes along

and you know it's for sure the only one

When they built you, brother, they turned dust into gold

When they built you, brother, they broke the mold

They say you can't take it with you,

but I think that they're wrong

'Cause all I know is I woke up this morning,

and something big was gone

Gone into that dark ether

where you're still young and hard and cold

Just like when they built you, brother, they broke the mold

Now your death is upon us

and we'll return your ashes to the earth

And I know you'll take comfort in knowing

you've been roundly blessed and cursed

But love is a power greater than death,

just like the songs and stories told

And when she built you, brother, she broke the mold

That attitude's a power stronger than death,

alive and burning her stone cold

When they built you, brother...”

("Terry's Song," by Bruce Springsteen)

The Book of Job, Revisited

In the dark of the early morning, I awoke from unsettling dreams, thinking about the Book of Job.

I have to admit I’ve always found its inclusion in the sacred cannon as rather suspect. Shuffled among the books of poetry, history, epistles, and eschatology, its sudden appearance seems incongruous.

You know the set-up: Job is blameless and upright, pious and quite prosperous. But the Devil bets God that if Job were to lose it all he would curse the Lord. God covers that action, and immediately sets Satan loose on Job to do with him what he will.

The first thing I find disturbing about this infamous prologue is that God and Lucifer are on speaking terms. “Frenemies” perhaps, but still quite familiar. And when celestial entities start wagering over mankind, you can expect a high body count to ensue.

Sure enough, Satan quickly kills off all of Job’s livestock (including 7000 sheep, 3000 camels, 500 oxen, and as many donkeys), then as a hedge, kills all of Job’s children too.

All of them.

Finally Old Nick afflicts Job with painful boils all over his body. And while his own wife nags him to “curse God and die,” Job would have none of it.  "The Lord has given, and the Lord has taken away” he maintains. “Blessed be the name of Lord.”

As if all of this weren’t bad enough, four friends then drop in for a visit and argue amongst themselves regarding the nature of God and human suffering. This goes on for pages and pages.

Prompted perhaps by this interminable speculation, Job eventually does curse: he curses the day he was born.

Over the years, I’ve read and heard a lot of different interpretations of this particular book of the Bible, but none seem to satisfy. If there is a take-away, maybe it’s this:

1. Your friends don’t know a damn thing about theology—or more precisely, theodicy. Certainly no more than you.

2. Seems like a bad idea to curse God, even if the Big Man is taking side action on your fate.

3. You won’t ever know the reason why all of this is happening to you. Whatever answers might be out there, you’ll never be privy to them as long as you’re hanging around here.

Maybe it’s the long run of misfortune that has fallen upon my own house that has me thinking about all this. Maybe it’s the fast approaching anniversary of my brother’s passing. Or perhaps the chaos and crisis facing some of my friends.

But in the closing chapters, God finally appears, if only to rebuke Job’s windbag buddies for being clueless about His nature, and to put Job in his place. Who are you to question my ways? God demands.

Job will never get to know the reason for all his suffering, the unbearable loss, the endless sorrow.

As an afterthought, God restores Job’s health and all of his wealth—minus the beloved children, of course. But it comes off as a feel-good ending, Hollywood style. Any of us walking around on this blue marble know that here in the real world, health and prosperity rarely return. There is no satisfying resolution, no tidy closure before the final credits roll…

And the screen goes black…

Short-Timer

The other morning, we’re sitting around the kitchen table when I ask the Cap how much time he has left.

“End of this month,” he says.

Wow.

In less than 30 days, he’ll be done. Retired.

The two boots at the table are a little slow to realize the opportunity they have sitting here in front of them: Here’s a guy who’s seen and done everything. Thirty-five years on the job. Started in the camps. Fireman, medic, engineer, and finally captain. Hundreds of thousands of calls. Campaign fires. Changes in technology, tactics, culture and policy. Experience. Insights. And I’m thinking…

Here’s a guy who’s got some war stories.

So throughout the day, I’m peppering him with questions:

Strangest call you’ve been on?

Most annoying?

Worst call?

What are the calls that are going follow you into retirement—the ones that will haunt you hereafter, the faces you’ll be seeing when you lie awake at night? And as I listen to him unspool 35 years of experience, I realize a couple of things:

1.     The stories have a familiar ring. I’ve heard all these before. You talk to enough old timers over the years, and you begin to realize that there is a sort of universality to firemen’s war stories. The tales are gruesome, often involving trains or car wrecks or toddlers or fatality fires. They could fit into tidy, macabre sub-categories with horrific titles like “crushed baby call,” or “guy hit by the freight train.”

2.     I’ve already been on most of these calls. I’ve seen a lot of the same ghastly things. Then I realize…I still have 10-13 years left. So I’m bound to see a few more of them.

The new guys, fresh out of the tower, listen politely. But typical of “generation-whatever,” they can only muster up and feign modest interest, since it’s not about them at the moment.

Me, I’m sitting in between them at the table, the new boots and this short-timer. I miss the naïveté and idealism I had when I first came on the job, but wish I had the confidence born of experience that this captain so thoroughly possesses.

Then the tones go off…

And three generations climb up on the rig