Whew.
We just got back from Rhode Island, where we did a follow-up visit with the new owners of the oil business. (Nicest people you ever met, by the way. Smart, too.)
The idea was to get – um – ‘a key process’ working in their new facility, using equipment we sold them. Show up Sunday, get back Wednesday. What can go wrong?
Well.
Everything was behind schedule, and they were shit out of inventory, so this better work. No pressure, though!
When we showed up, the electrician was still running wires to the panel, so I killed time fixing dead light fixtures. When the electrician finally finished, nothing worked.
Who you gonna call?
I figured I must’a done something stupid, and I started debugging. It turns out the new 3-phase power was corrupted at the source, and of course the electrician was long gone.
So. I kept at it and finally tracked down where he’d messed up wiring one of the phases. I fixed it, and we tried it again.
We turned it on, and it started heating up, and the whole crew gave me a rousing cheer!
I turned on the motor, and nothing happened, and the whole crew looked at one another and dispersed.
Back to the drawing board.
It wasn’t hard, but this time, I made sure it all worked before I spread the word, and I got another rousing cheer.
So we were all set, and only a day behind schedule. Tuesday morning, we’d do a pipe-cleaner run with all the old equipment, and all the new equipment and personnel, running together in perfect harmony, first try. What can go wrong? And who you gonna call when it does?
We went down the road to a world-famous oyster house that grows its own oysters, and we had oysters for dinner.
The waitress dropped a drink inches from Rob’s head, and it shattered on the floor.
I didn’t sleep well.
Memo to Self: Drink coffee early in the morning, so you can poop before your drive to work.
Nope. I didn’t get sick. I didn’t shit my pants. Nothing went wrong.
Everything worked perfectly, and I got a rousing cheer.
I hit them up for a free tee shirt, and we went out for Guatemalan food.
And the next day, it was back to the peace and quiet of my cat and my cellar.
Ahhhhh.
Mary had some carpal tunnel work done on her hand, and she had to be at the hospital at 6:30 in the morning, so I got up early and I dropped her off and I was faced with the age-old question:
How do you kill 90 minutes at 6:30 am when you’re 20 minutes from home?
Easy: You walk to a bakery, and you buy baked goods, and you eat them while walking back.
So I walked to a bakery, but it was closed, and the snow turned to rain, and I got soaked while walking back.
Mary’s hand is doing well.
I’m re-modelling the bathroom.
Actually, it’s more like I’m finishing the bathroom for the first time after all these years and, if I had any pride, I’d be embarrassed about that. And I sorta am.
Since C3PR is dead-in-the-water with supply chain issues, I’ve got a couple weeks to kill, so I’m re-inventing the bathroom instead. Mary took charge of paint samples, without even being asked. I was making good progress on this project, when it got interrupted by …
This morning, I was peacefully working wood when my phone buzzed.
A voice mail from Escondido, it said.
“Call me,” it said.
I called, and I got a guy at Redwood Terrace, where Dad lives.
“I’m calling to let you know that Robert Wistort has died from a self-inf…”
Wait wait wait .. what? Wow. Whoa…..
Huh.
I let the news sink in for just a little too long.
“Hello? Hello?”
So….
Dad and I.
We go way back.
When He was My age, he used to come visit in Westford, and he would brush hog the meadow while I went to work. And after dinner, we’d have these wide-ranging talks about all manner of stuff. Death and dying came up quite a bit, and I can tell you:
He had this planned.
He thought this through years ago and he answered, for himself, that old, hard question:
“When is it not worth it?”
And his answer was: “Pain and indignity.”
And he recognized it when he saw it, and he stuck to his guns – so to speak.
And for that – and more – I admire him.
It can’t be an easy thing, ending your life. When we went down there to start sorting things out, my job was going through his … stuff. And a lot of his stuff was books.
About thirty years ago, I visited Dad in Lafayette, and we were out in the back yard,
in the garage,
in his office,
in the back,
and he was looking for a book he wanted to show me. Something about something he thought was cool. And he suddenly stopped looking, and he looked up at me, and he said:
“When I die, don’t forget to go through my books.”
And then he went right on looking for whatever he was looking for.
At the time, I’d say he had about – oh – 15 shelves of books.
Thirty years later, he was down to about – oh – 5 shelves.
So somewhere along the line – probably more than once – Dad downsized his book collection, and you can bet that he was pretty careful about what he kept and what he threw out.
He kept books about stuff he was interested in.
Physical mechanisms.
Color and chemistry.
Mathematical tables.
Names and numbers.
(YouNameIt) For Dummies.
Hand work.
Craft work.
Wood work.
Metal work.
And philosophy and religion. Lots of philosophy and religion. I’m talking 28 inches of thick and thin books and, if I know Dad, he read at least half of them half way through.
This is a man who took a good, hard look at the big picture before he decided to do what he did.
I just wish he hadn’t messed up the details.
The last time I saw Dad.
So we went to San Diego, and we got a good start and we did a lot of stuff, and finally it was time to come back home.
Two flights. Home at midnight. Easy peasy.
Everything was cool, and I was watching an in-flight movie, and Mary showed me her phone.
Our connecting flight had been cancelled. “We will get back to you shortly with alternatives,” they said. Bullshit.
We got off the plane and got in a line. Mary was on her phone, and the line was barely moving.
We worked our way 2/3 through, and they suddenly closed down the desk and told everyone in the line to go downstairs, collect their luggage, and get in another line.
We went downstairs and we got our bag, but we took one look at the line and reserved a hotel. We took the train to the shuttle and the shuttle to the hotel, and the guy at the desk told us that the we’re not in the system. Mary showed him the a confirmation email, and he tells us that, because it was booked by a 3rd party and the room was taken, there’s nothing he can do, so we got back online.
But by now, it was past midnight, and the online reservation systems wouldn’t let us reserve a room for “last night,” so we kept working the phones, but still came up empty. Mary managed to book a flight for the next day, but only realized too late that she’d booked an evening – not a morning – flight, and gave up trying to change it after 23 minutes on hold. Better than nothing, we decided, and since both We and our phones were running on fumes, we commandeered the only wall outlet in the hotel lobby, and we hunkered down for the night. I slept in a chair from 4 to 5. Mary didn’t sleep at all.
We decided to rent a car for a 1-way, 1-day drive home, and we got on the freeway at 6:30 am. We drove in short stints, and both of us stayed awake, in case the driver started to nod off. It worked until it didn’t, and we pulled over and slept for an hour in the car in a parking lot. When we woke up, Mary got another email. The evening flight she’d booked – but hadn’t been able to change – had been cancelled. “We will get back to you shortly with alternatives,” they said. This time, we laughed, because we were almost home.
And then the dashboard dinged.
The low-on-fuel light went on.
A road sign said “Next exit 16 miles.”
The estimated range display said “20 miles.”
I slowed down to save gas, and when we finally pulled up to the pump, it was down to 7.
We made it home safe and tired, and I’ve never been so happy to hug my cat.