Arthur Webster   Just plain honesty
One of the great pleasures in my life is walking out in the countryside with my two dogs.


The dogs tend to do the usual, unsavoury doggy things and I simply soak up the sights and sounds of all that is around me.


Normally I walk where nobody else is likely to go because Scamp, the hairy beast in my photo, is becoming cranky in her old age and has decided that I need protection from anything on two legs. Normally, also, when I walk, I tend to stop only to take a closer look at something or to turn over a rock to see what resides underneath.


This morning, after a particularly bad night, I was in no condition to simply walk - I had to stop and sit on a bench (which my dogs were delighted about because it meant they could mob me and then lie underneath the bench, in the shade).


We had only been there for about two minutes when an old guy (yes, I know, like me) came along and sat with us. He made the usual social noises and seemed all set to make a bloody nuisance of himself. Then he asked me a simple question. He asked me why life was so unfair.


I gave him my stock answer that as far as I was concerned, life was neither fair nor unfair but that you got out of it what you put in. That the rewards for being alive were two-fold. First we are able to enjoy our lives and second, we are not getting out alive.


He latched on to the 'not getting out alive' part and asked if I thought that it was a bad idea to end your life voluntarily if everything was simply too bad to bear. Since I have never been in the situation that this could have been an option, I simply told him that I did not know.


I was then given the benefit of "that's the trouble, nobody else can understand' followed by a tale of woe that, for want of a better word, left me a little envious of this man. The wife to whom he had been happily married for 45 years had recently died. It was a sudden death and totally unexpected. After the funeral his three daughters had offered him a granny flat in the home of one of them - he could choose one or even flit between all three.


"So what's your problem? I asked him.


It seems his problem was that he did not feel that he was getting enough sympathy. He wanted his daughters to be more expressive about how they missed their mother and how they could understand his loss. He was convinced that the lack of loads of emotional outpourings were indicative of a lack of care and concern - worse "That nobody understands what I am going through."


In my usual sensitive fashion, I simply burst out laughing. I honestly thought the guy was pulling my leg and playing me for a fool - maybe with a request for cash to follow.


He took my laughter as a sign that I, too, did not understand.


Once I realised that he was serious, I simply asked him if he thought he was unique. Did he have some right to go through life without being hit by miss-fortune now and again. He asked me what I could possibly know about miss-fortune.


So I told him.


We spent about half an hour more before I felt able to resume my walk.


Before I left him sitting on the bench, the guy reached into a small bag he was carrying and pulled out a rope and gave it to me.


Whether he would have done it or not, I'll never know. but he told me he sat with me in the hopes he could drive me away so he could quietly hang himself from the one sturdy tree in the area, which just happened to be next to the bench.


Serendipity in action.


I never walk where there are people.


I never stop to sit down.


This morning - I did.


 


 
Jun 10th 2008 05:04