We Move On

I was in a Management program with the grocery company I used to work for out here in California about 10 years ago. When the program started I was matched up with a guy I had never met. Once I found out his name I checked around to see if anyone I knew also knew him. The response was unanimous; “you guys are a perfect match,” I was told. “You two will really hit it off” was another common response. Unreal how right everyone was.

Mac is a little more than nine years younger than I and is a much bigger guy. He could easily squash me with his index finger. The thing that made people think we’d get along was the way we talked and joked. Within a few hours of meeting him, we were literally crying from laughing so hard at the things we both found funny within the program we had just started. We would make fun of anything; ourselves included and just plain have a great time. It was always a chore going out to lunch with him because it would take so long for us to eat, as we would be laughing throughout. There was a time we were at lunch, spending an inordinate amount of time eating a simple meal, that as we got up to leave we were asked if we were professional comedians. This wasn’t uncommon. We had a lot of fun. There was a time when Mac had to send an email to Shelly, my ex, about some question we had. He simply signed it Kevin’s other life partner”. Like I said, we had a lot of fun.

Well, life went on, I left California, and Mac was managing whatever store the company would place him in while raising his three kids along with his wife.

Shelly called me a few days before I came out here and told me a story that none of us could possibly imagine. Mac was following his wife home last August 30’Th. Corinna had his daughter in her car and Mac had his son. As Mac was driving, he stood witness to his wife’s car being hit and pushed down into a ditch. Mac’s daughter ended up with a broken arm but Corinna was crushed and didn’t survive. Mac and Corinna have literally been together since they were in sixth grade and here he was, on the side of the road watching his wife die.

My original intent, while out here, was to see family and some Facebook friends that live out here. Once I was told about Mac, that went out the window. I found what store he worked at and went and visited him this morning. He didn’t look much different, a little worn, but what do you expect. We shook hands when I saw him in the store and it was a good shake. He held on, while repeating my name over and over. “Kevin Mittleman” he said a number of times before letting go. We went up to his office and sat and talked for a couple hours and it was good. We laughed about a lot of things, we laughed hard about a lot more and we only talked a little about Corinna. He simply asked me if I had heard what was going on in his life and I said yes. He spoke about how much life had been turned upside down on that day in August. He also said that life continues and he had been back to work for two months now. We got off the subject and we started laughing again. I don’t have access to a car tomorrow or we were going to go out to lunch but we exchanged numbers and I got his email address. Mac told me how wonderful it was seeing me today and as I left, I was comforted by that. I know he needed the laughs and I’m confident that there are few around that could have given him the type he got with me.

I’d like to apologize to the folks I was going to try to catch up with today but I think this took precedence. I’ve made a ton of lousy decisions in my life. I’ve let people down and haven’t been all I could be for a number of folks who’ve depended on me. Today, however, I did something good and as I sit here in a Starbucks writing this as tears slide down my face, I’ll take that feeling of doing something good and hold onto it for as long as I can.