The Crime of the Ancient Asshole

Like Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, doomed to tell of his thoughtless crime until he died, so here am I; skipping a year only made everything worse.

And, like the wedding guest in his epic poem “The Rhime of the Ancient Mariner” (It is an ancient Mariner, and he stoppeth one of three), I now stop you, dear reader, and grasp you by your arm. You are trapped, bound by fate to read my true story of Christmas, tragedy and loss, and of warnings concerning things not yet come, but which surely will. Sit back, and give me your attention.

It was Christmas Eve, 1994. I was recently separated from my wife, forced out of home, away from my children, Beth, age eleven, and Michael Jr., age seven. It was hard on them as well as myself; we were so close. I packed their lunches, took them to school, picked them up, made snacks and ran and played outside, I helped with homework, and read stories at bed time. You can’t be closer than that. And when you get pulled apart, there’s no pain like it. At least that’s what I thought.

How wrong I was would become clear.

That year, that first year, I did not want to see them for Christmas. I had no money for gifts, not anything at all to even resemble a gift. And so, after years of lighting up Christmas morning with toys, this year I wasn’t going to feel much like a daddy, and certainly not a man. It was cold that night and for some reason, darker than any night I had ever seen in desert or mountains. It could have been my perception, probably was, but my heart was equally dark. Black, lacking any of the sentiment or cheer I had felt when I was with them. I was not going to visit them.

I had an infection in my left eye. I would awake every morning, a Krispy Kreme glaze of white over my eye and eyelid, I’d steam it away, and have to repeat cleaning it several times in a day. I planned to go to the hospital, so after work at Papa John’s, I killed time so that I would get there very late and there wouldn’t be too many people in the Emergency Department waiting room.

Having Christmas tips, (enough that I indulged in a Wendy’s Triple for dinner), a friend told me about how my plan for avoiding my kids on Christmas sucked. He was young when his parents divorced, and he would visit his dad every Christmas. He said, “I didn’t care what he gave me, or if we sat and just watched TV. I just wanted to be with my dad”. That was the first lesson I would get that night.

I arrived at John’s Hopkins Bayview Hospital at eleven or a bit after. The waiting room was stuffed with sick people and, worse, many were children. I felt guilty as I signed in. Told that it would take time to be seen, I went outside to smoke. It was dark there in the parking lot, and this time not merely by my soulless perception. I lit a Winston and a soft but pathetic voice behind me made me jump: “Got a light?”

I could only barely see him, there in the dark. He lit the Bic I handed him, and in its glow, I saw something I have never forgotten: a black man, black as coal, the face being lined and aged as that of one who has been to Hell and only halfway come back. Part of him was still there. I was filled with pity. My fear of him was gone. Here was a man I wanted immediately to hug. I often wish that I had.

“I’m here trying to get committed,” he said, and the sadness poured from every word. Like the Mariner’s wedding guest, I would hear his story; I was helpless to do otherwise.

“I’ve been — I lost my family. I lost everything.  I had a wife, two kids, great job, house, two cars, even a boat. One day…”

One day his wife and children were killed in a car accident. Three lives were ended so suddenly that no human on this planet could ever tell him again that God is real, that it was fate, or that any reason under the sun had a part or explanation in or for such a horror.

“I went into the bottle after that,” he said, “and I never came out. I lost my job. Then my boat. Then my car. When the sheriff came to get me out of the house, I swung on him.”

He had lived on the cruel and merciless streets of Baltimore ever since. And aged grievously. Here was a man so beaten down by tragedy that he was not living, but merely surviving. He was so tragic to me that I felt tears in my eyes. A security guard came out and yelled at him to get inside. He was supposed to be on suicide guard, and the guard had let him slip away. And was castigating him for it. Before he turned to leave me, he said the saddest thing of all: “I just want my kids back.”

Well. I never saw him again. Next morning, I called my ex. I said I had nothing to give the kids. I didn’t feel right visiting. She put my daughter on the line. Beth was far wiser and kinder than anyone I’ve ever met. She said, “It’s okay, daddy. Your gift can be that you love us.”

She melted my heart. Standing at a public payphone, I silently wept. And I remembered the two lessons given me the night before.

And so I crossed the Francis Scott Key Bridge, went to visit, and we did lots of hugs and talking and I never again looked back, except Christmas time, when I honored my teachers: a friend who taught me that no gift is equal to a father’s love for his children, nor is their love for him, and one very broken man who pulled his heart out and let me see the ghosts of Christmas Future.

I skipped this story last year, but this year I realized that I never told it for myself.

Because it does no good to me. I learned the lessons and I acted on them.

But that’s not the point of the story. Like the Ancient Mariner, I am bound by honor and fate to retell this shamefully selfish plan I had in 1994. The man whose face was blacker than a New Mexico night taught me about boundless love, unbearable loss, and how he just wished he could have another chance, how he wished his children could have another chance. I could not feel his grief, but he did make me feel guilt.

The story I tell is now identical to his. Although many Christmases and birthdays would pass after 1994, and we made great memories and and went on epic adventures, the times came for me to lose them both. And that is why I’m writing this.

I want you to think about this: you never know how much time you have with any loved one, be they family or friend, and now, especially now in these busy, frightening times, you should always put them first and spend every second you can with them. Because tomorrow, they may not be here anymore, nor ever again to pass our way. You will be heartbroken. Feel guilty. You will cry endlessly. And the holidays. Oh, the holidays! They bring a special pain, one you cannot escape. No amount of alcohol and no drug can deaden it. Can’t even moderate it. Substances merely make everything worse.

You may find yourself even hating this time of year, full of bitterness and unable to see any good in the world.

Beth died in 2012, Michael Junior in 2018. The last time I saw him was Christmas Day 2017. I spent years never being able to control my anger, my grief, my bitterness. When my son died, we had mourned Beth together. When he died, I was dropped into bewildered despair. I went crazy and I went to Hell. I started this blog afterward and tried to give an accounting of myself because I hated myself and I secretly wanted everyone else to hate me, too. I wrote terrible things. What I wrote was always true and as faithful to memory as I trusted them to be.

Now, after trying to reconcile with other family members, and in so doing help them to see that the hurtful things I said after Junior’s death were uttered or written by a man no longer sane, I’ve regained what little bit of honor I had before my children died. An apology when forced is difficult to utter; but one truly meant chokes up the throat and releases tears of guilt you never should have retained at all.

Yes, mental illness does play a part in this tragedy, but so do other things.

Things like remorse, pain, loneliness and emptiness. Regret. Guilt. Ever looking backwards, living the past again and again and again, a prisoner in my own mind.

But it does not do to trap yourself so, holding yourself hostage for terrible things for terrible reasons. You cannot live; you’re merely surviving.

It is far better to live as best you can, and, like I, finally climb a peak where the air is fresh, vision ahead is clear, and to my back there is only the best of what I left behind. The climb stripped me of regret, remorse and guilt. I am not on the highest mountain, but neither am I still in Hell.

I prefer to remember a time when I was younger, and I ran with my children under gray skies and blue, laughing every step of the way. We were so free.

Now, I have faith that they live in Heaven.

Still…this time of year…I do miss them.

And so, my story. And my fated mission. I hold it to be an honorable one: I never told it for me.

Dear friend, I tell it for you.

Every day, tell those you love how you feel. Hug and kiss them when they’re with you. Resist argument and bring the subject up: what if you didn’t have each other? There’s no time for fighting. No tomorrow. Nothing to take for granted. Remember that.

I release you, friend. Go in peace share this post, tell others how loss truly feels. Especially with things left unsaid. Life is like that. It knows how to be cruel.

May the season bring you joy, and a bit of peace. God bless; be well.