When a Mainer quits his job, we say he “got done”.([10. The subject is considered active rather than passive. That is, he gets himself done, finishes, or achieves doneness, rather than getting done by something or someone. I have no other source for this information than my own experience.]) You can say that about dying, too.
He got done. Cancer.
I imagine a man who got done as an old carpenter. I was a young carpenter once, and that was hard enough: hauling plywood, roofing, demolition, in baking sun and bitter cold. It’s hard to say what getting done means to an old carpenter. Did he retire? Or did he just wear out? How many 65-year-old carpenters do you see?
Back in 2000 I joined a building crew. I went to Home Depot to buy a tool belt. An employee in the tool aisle looked like he might be an old carpenter: grey, solemn, a bit bored. Years later I saw how plainly a new, stiff pinkish-brown cowhide toolbelt screamed “rookie”.([20. There are some amusing stories out there of veteran carpenters who finally wore out their tool belt (and/or the “sacks” that hang from them). Faced with the prospect of wearing a new tool belt, they’ve been known to run over the new gear repeatedly in an attempt to soften it up, or, more likely, just make it look worn.]) I can only imagine what he thought of me, the opposing pole in the world of men at work, eager to trade my skin and bones for the thrill of building. With a couple years of hard labor I proved to myself that I could endure and thrive in that world. After that, it was just work.
It took me ten years to sour on web development. I was listless, frustrated, then just sick, because of my brain tumor. Now that I’m back to work (part time), with renewed energy and focus, I remember why it fascinates me. But I also remember I’m likely to die within a few years. It tends to dampen my enthusiasm for learning new programming languages and techniques.
In some ways, I’ve been “gettin’ done” since the day of my diagnosis, when I wrote down the master passwords for my servers so they wouldn’t die with me in surgery. I had already acknowledged the failure of my web hosting venture (when I took a full-time job), but I still hosted a few dozen web sites and people were relying on me to maintain them.
Ever since that day, I’ve been working to shut down my servers. Relocating client sites to other hosts has been a continuous reminder of how silly I was to get into the web hosting business in the first place. It is also a lot of work, none of which I deem billable, thus no surprise my standard of service has fallen. There’s a phrase for that, too: “mailing it in”.([30. This is not a Mainerism or a Yankeeism as far as I know. I have heard it most often in the context of sports. A team that has been eliminated from play-off contention is thought to be more likely to demonstrate a half-hearted effort. They didn’t show up. They mailed it in.])
I attended my brother’s fiancée’s mother’s funeral on Thursday. Janet Dee (Lyman) Eustis died of cancer March 26 at the age of 47.
I drove our car in the funeral procession from downtown Auburn to Gracelawn Memorial Park. It’s a fascinating process. Apparently, nothing shall interrupt a funeral procession, red lights included. Road work yields, too, or so I thought. In fact it was the City of Lewiston Department of Public Works, with their road-building equipment, lined up on Turner Street, hats off, heads bowed. At the end of this line of Caterpillar yellow, blaze orange, safety green, grey beards and camo, a blinking message board spelled out this tribute:
to the family of
Janet Eustis
Our deepest
sympathies
I teared up, seeing all of those guys standing in the cold rain, honoring Mrs. Eustis and her husband Mark, who still works with them. I thought about what I would want for my own funeral. But that barely matters. A funeral is no service to the deceased. It’s for the survivors, to prove their bonds. I was there for my brother and his fiancée, and thankful to have the chance to tell Mark that I was sorry for his loss.
But I was anxious and surly for most of the day, passing a bit too close, perhaps, to the realm of death.
I returned to Aikido class this morning after a few weeks off. At first I doubted my balance and my strength. “Don’t mail it in just yet,” I thought. I subscribe to the “use it or lose it” theory of capabilities, that I’ve got to show up and practice if I want to get better.
I stabilized, despite a feeling of tunnel vision and numbness in my toes. Our venerable chief instructor, Kiff, has suggested I could test for promotion to “nikyu” rank this fall if I practice twice a week. It’s great exercise (which I sorely lacked in winter) and good discipline. But with warmer weather coming I think I’ll prefer windsurfing.
In some ways it is surreal to be practicing Aikido again. A few weeks after my surgery I asked to speak at the dojo. I actually prepared a short speech comparing Aikido’s concept of ukemi (receiving a technique, “getting beat up”) to the trials of Buzz Lightyear in the movie Toy Story. Fortunately, I scrapped the maudlin self-tribute and spoke, as they say, “from the heart”.
Then in late summer I was invited by a fellow aikidoka and professional photographer to appear in group and solo portraits at the dojo. I’ve got one hung in my office now, of me sitting in seiza (on my heels) in front of portraits of O Sensei and Kanai Sensei.([35. O Sensei (“Great Teacher”, born Morihei Ueshiba in 1883) was the founder of Aikido. The late Kanai Sensei was his student and one of three practitioners to introduce Aikido to the United States in the 1960s. He settled in the Boston area and taught there, but regularly visited the fledgeling Portland dojo.]) My posture was upright, my face attentive: not a bad way to be remembered in death, perhaps joining a couple of the other portraits at the dojo of those who have died. Indeed, I would consider it a great honor. (Perhaps downsize it to a 4-by-6).
We’re like a family, more so because it’s run by folks with full-time jobs elsewhere, people who showed up for their first class long ago (decades, for some) in crisp white uniforms to try to learn this art. I haven’t always been the best student. (I remembered to bring a check today for March dues but forgot to leave it there). But I’ll always remember the feeling of being welcomed (after sticking with it for a while) and the humble quality of our decorum: “if you bow to the universe, it bows back”.([40. This is part of a quote attributed to O Sensei, the founder of Aikido.])
On the subject of gettin’ done, there’s a long list of things I’ve left undone. We moved into our newly renovated house in 2006 and still don’t have baseboard in most of our rooms. I’ve had a stack of 1-by-6 pine sitting down in the basement for almost two of those years, waiting for a hammer and a few finish nails and a few hours of labor. Many boxes are waiting in the attic to be unpacked from the move. Shall they, sooner or later, join the steady flow of the dead’s unwanted leavings?
I might try my old friend Jack Hansen’s trick of selling off bits of the estate while still alive. Back in 2000 I read a newspaper article about Jack and Lillian, an elderly childless couple in Andover, Mass. who were struggling to keep warm in winter. I was a young carpenter and collector of end cuts([50. End cuts are short pieces of leftover lumber. I used them for grilling hot dogs.]) and I wanted to help. I brought them bags of wood([60. Framing lumber (typically spruce, pine or fir) burns readily but it’s not good firewood. It’s too pitchy and won’t last. I supposed it was better than nothing.]) to burn and we struck up a friendship. One day Jack invited me to tour his basement, where he managed to sell me an old grinder and some antique hand tools. He died about a year later.
When it comes to my final days, I won’t be worrying about baseboard or a few hundred bucks. It’s hard to say what unfinished business will harry my limping mind: old friends lost, adventures unrealized, endearments unspoken. Or baseboard. Who knows? Something tells me I’ll go down dreaming of my own basement tomb, the smell of fresh-cut spruce, and the weight of a hammer in my hand.
NOTES: