Our time

I had an interesting experience this morning.

I had to run to the post office to get some stamps so I could mail out my car insurance payment, and the line was unusually small for a Saturday. There was just me and a man in front of me, fidgeting quite a bit as he waited his turn. He looked nervous and was sweating profusely as his glassy eyes kept darting around the room and at the window. Something about him made me uneasy, so I kept my distance as the lady at the counter finished her business and left the store.

The post man working the counter was very friendly as the shifty-eyed man shuffled up to the counter. “Good morning, sir, and how can I help you today?”

The man didn’t say anything, but was instead looking around the back of the office and then at the ceiling.

The postman glanced at me, then back to the strange customer. “Sir?”

The man’s head snapped back to the post man.

“What can I do for you today?”

The man was quiet for a second, then started mumbling incoherently.

The postman started to look concerned. “I’m sorry?”

The strange man stopped, looking over at me again, then turned back to the post man. “I…I need help.”

“Yes, what can I help you with?”

“I…” He ran a hand through his sweat-soaked blonde hair. “I’m having chest pains,” he sputtered finally. It was obvious that there was something not right with this person that had nothing to do with his chest.

“Okay,” said the postman, “what would you like me to do?”

The strange man looked irritated. “Call an ambulance.”

The postman nodded, slowly and calmly making his way around a package trolley to the other end of his counter, keeping an eye on the customer the whole time without making it obvious he was doing it. The customer kept running his hands over his hair and shoulders, almost like he was trying to brush something off of himself, his eyes wildly going over the room and fixing themselves more than once upon me. I pretended to be reading something on the bulletin board as the postman turned just long enough to hit the three buttons to place the call. Not more than a couple of seconds passed and he caught my eyes with his. “Hello, Cleveland Police department? This is the postmaster at the Rocky River station…”

The customer looked startled at the words, then started shuffling away from me down to the other end of the counter where the postman was. The postman, meanwhile, was giving the address of where we were and a brief description of the situation before being put through to the medical dispatch.

While the postman was talking to dispatch,  the strange man had resumed his fidgeting, pacing back and forth between the counter’s edge and the display of decorated envelopes for sale. He started ruffling through them, touching each one in turn, then looking at me, shuffling the few steps back to the counter, then back to the display to ruffle another section, look at me, shuffle back. He must have executed this bizarre ritual about five or six times when the postman interrupted to ask some questions, like how old he was, if he had his doctor’s card, and what his name was. “Jerry,” was the reply.

“Jerry what?”

He gave the last name, and before the postman could say it apparently dispatch already knew. He glanced at me again with the eyes of someone growing very concerned but who is trying desperately hard not to show it, then fixed his gaze back on our odd little friend (who had wandered down by the door and was looking peculiarly out the window).

The postmaster stayed on the line a few more moments, almost as if he were being given instructions. Meanwhile, the odd man addressed me directly for the first time. “I don’t feel right.”

“Maybe you should sit down a moment and rest until help gets here,” I suggested as gently as I could.

The man seemed to grow not quite angry, but very annoyed. “That’s what they said before!” he snapped before resuming his deranged stare out the window.

The postmaster finished his call, placing the phone softly back on its cradle and motioning me closer to the counter. “Jerry, they’re sending an ambulance for you.”

“Yeah, I figured they would.”

“Just wait here until they arrive.”

The man snorted.

The postmaster started a cheery, nothing-out-of-the-ordinary conversation with me as he got my stamps. We saw the ambulance pulling up quickly through the paking lot, no lights or sirens. Upon seeing it, Jerry quickly left the post office and started walking rapidly down the sidewalk.

“Well,” sighed the postmaster as he came around the counter, “this can’t be good…”

We hurried to the doorway of the post office and poked our heads outside. Jerry was almost jogging down the sidewalk, zig-zagging his way through the startled patrons of a sidewalk sale as the ambulance crew chased him down the street, yelling for him to stop.

“Wait here,” the postman told me. “And if any customers come up, could you tell them I’ll be right back?” I gave him a thumbs-up, he thanked me and went tearing down the street. By this point, all the little shop-keepers were coming out to see what was going on. The postmaster caught up with the fleeing man and convinced him it was best if he went with the ambulance crew so he could be helped.

And so our little drama ends, for today anyway. As the out-of-breath postmaster made his way back up to his little office to relieve me of my guardianship, I started thinking about how easy it would have been for the scene to have ended much less pleasantly than it had. What if the man had been armed, or of a more violent disposition? And from there, my thoughts went a step further: what if my time had been today? I mean, at 23, I’ve led what I feel has been a fairly eventful and interesting life so far, and the thought that it could have ended rather unceremoniously in the lobby of a local post office while buying stamps to pay my car insurance is rather disconcerting. And yet it very well could have happened. None of us knows when or how we’ll finally enter the Great Beyond; immediate examples that come to mind include the average 11 American office workers per year who choke to death while chewing on ballpoint pens, or the two Britons in 2003 who (and I’m still trying to figure out how they did this) died while riding on escalators. Hell, three months ago a friend of mine was murdered because he went to class. It’s a strange and often ugly world we live in.

As I went about my day, giving thanks for another opportunity to enjoy this beautiful weather and see my Scott again, I got to thinking about the world after someone leaves it. Since everything, and be default everyone, is interconnected, every time someone dies, the whole world is affected (with certain members of it obviously affected much more than others). For example, let’s say hypothetically that I died this morning. The first people to find out would be the people finding the bodies. As most people don’t deal with death on a regular basis, that particularly gruesome discovery would almost certainly stay with them. Then we have the policemen responding to the call, and because they deal with this stuff, it affects them less than the first people to see the bodies (unless it’s the cop’s first; you never forget that one), but it still affects them. Then come the people who collect the bodies, who’d probably feel bad but emotionally it probably wouldn’t affect them as much as they’re employed specifically to deal with this every day. By now, we’re talking about 15-20 people who’ve never even met me before are already affected by my unfortunate demise.

Being the love of my life and my partner in all things, Scott would be one of the first people who actually know and are close to me to find out. He’d be completely devestated (especially after last night, wink wink). Then there would be his immediate family (5), their significant others (+2), the aunts, uncles, and their families (+35-40), whatever friends Scott’s mom talks to (say 10 people), and Scott’s friends (let’s say another 35). So far the total number of persons affected by my death is roughly 118 people, and my own family hasn’t even been informed yet.

They police would probably get a hold of my mom first, so that’s her, Brian, Lisa, and Steve (+4). Brian would tell his kids and family (+12), Lisa’d call her boyfriend (+1), Steve would be calling all his friends (+20), and soon news would be spreading like wild fire. My dad would be next on the list, he’d tell Pat and the boys, so there’s another 4. Then we have my grandparents (+4 when you count my great-grandmother), aunts and uncles (+6) and their kids (+10), significant others of my older cousins (+5), and various other extended family members (+40 or so in DuBois and St Marys alone). There’s another 106, so our total so far is around 226 people.

Still in west central PA, we need to add in all my former co-workers (20 from Fox’s, probably 75 from the Manor), all my Penn State people (easily 200 people right there), my former mentees (another 100), my friends at the high school (roughly 50 there), my professors at Clarion (another 30), and a miscellaeny of other PA friends (say around 100, past and present).

Back in Cleveland, my boss would, undoubtedly, have to be notified, and she and the rest of the team would not take it well. So there’s another 7 people. Then we’d have the rest of the directors (+4), the managers (+6 I can think of), the counselors (+40), and the rest of the support staff  (+10 I can think of). Because of my position, there are also roughly 150 faculty members affected by my passing, so our total is now 1018.

And that isn’t counting all my former classmates, friends of the family, the families of everybody mentioned above, my neighbors, people I used to do a lot of business with, etc. In all, we’re talking about thousands and thousands of people affected by the death of one little old me. Now, taking into consideration the nice postmaster probably would have met the same fate, and considering how many people he must have known in his lifetime, between the two of us, we’re talking hundreds of thousands of people, not to mention all of the people who would undoubtedly read about it in the newspapers and the people they talk to about it.

So, by ripple effect, it’s not a big step to see how that moves into the entire world being affected, in one way or another, by our deaths. Taking that a step farther, realizing that it doesn’t matter who is in that room when the time comes, isn’t it obvious how precious and significant each and every life is?