Job Satisfaction - Part Deux

The tree expert, the one from the far distant land of Moronia, from here-to-forth (I don't know if that's really a phrase) shall be called Ernie, placed his tool of choice on the ground. It was a blending of a pool skimmer pole and a chainsaw. I have no idea how it worked other than the fact that the blade moved from twenty feet away while Ernie could keep his feet planted firmly on the ground. Ernie moved with the fluidity of a natural athlete; his bare arms rippled when he held the chainsaw. I watched Christine out of the corner of my eye to see if she was noticing the physique of this young buck. Yup. I tried to place myself a little more in the path of her view so she would look at my be-muscled form. I flexed. Nothing. I cleared my throat while raising my own arms behind my head. She was transfixed. But who can blame her? For her to look at my arms at that point would be like a person going to the zoo to look at domesticated kittens while the lions are roaring in the background.

Ernie, with no verbal encouragement from his friends - in fact, there was not even a recognition that Ernie was going to climb the tree at all - put these spiky things on his shoes, draped some ropes over his head, I noticed he was looking our way to see if we were watching - he purposely flexed his muscles - I saw that! - and began to shinny his way up the now stripped down maple tree. Our tree looked as if it had been systematically disrobed; naked, it stood, as if on stage, very self-conscious, wanting only to disappear. It was at that point I felt the most sorry for it, if one can feel pain for a tree anyway. I think this is the way many people feel at the end of their lives, disrobed, naked - nothing left to cover them. They are painfully aware that earthly life is soon to disappear.

I worked in a nursing home for my clinical pastoral education. Through the first thirty-one years of my life, I had never been in the presence of any one who was truly in the last stages of dying. But, that changed when I met Catherine. She was smart as a whip; feisty, eighty-eight years old and weighed about ninety pounds. The opportunity arose for me to visit with Catherine a few times during a rousing game of Bingo. While most people in the nursing home were playing one card, Catherine was playing three and in the midst of the calls, she would quickly place her chips and go right back to her crossword puzzle. She saw me approach and squinted her eyes through her enormously thick glasses.

"Hello, young buck," she said. Most people in the nursing home dispense with any formalities about titles. They've earned the right, I believe.

"Hello, Catherine, how are we today?"

She waved her hand at me as if flushing a gnat from in front of her face. "Pshh. Shut up, Reid. Stop acting like one of the stiff doctors."

I took a chair beside her. "Are you winning?"

She looked over the table in front of her. An assortment of shampoos, stuffed animals, hand creams and quarters were strewn in front of her. She leaned over to whisper to me. "Some of the others get excited about this (excrement), but to me, it's just stuff to clutter up my room. I usually just give it away anyway."

"That's very kind of you, Catherine."

"I just don't want it in my room. There's nothing kind about it." She reached over and grabbed my hand. "Let's blow this popsicle stand."

We strolled down the hallway to her room, she in her wheelchair, I, ambulatory. As we turned in to her room, she motioned for me to sit in one of the last remnants from her home. It was an old, greenish-brown rocking chair circa 1965. As I sat down, she wheeled herself closer to me and immediately took my hand back onto the pillow on her lap covered by a blanket. Catherine always had a blanket over her legs. With liver-spotted hands, she stroked my hand like a cat.

"Reid, I'm getting ready to die."

"Don't say that, Catherine, you've got a lot of days left to live."

She gripped my hand tighter. With one hand she pulled back the blanket to reveal something that I had not known about her. She had both legs amputated. My first reaction was to pull my hands away from her. Holding on tight she said, "That's the reaction that most people have - fear. They want to pull away as if diabetes was contagious, or that death can be transferred through the air we breathe. Please don't do that."

I tried to relax. She pulled the blanket back over her legs. "I'm going to die," she repeated. "But that's not the worst part. What is the scariest, most hurtful part, is that I've been amputated from my family and friends. They come because they feel guilty, or responsible. They don't really want to be here; they just want to put in their time so that they can get their inheritance when I'm gone." I shook my head. "Slowly, piece by piece, my life is being lopped off just like my legs, and I am left just a small shell. It's horrible."

Catherine died two days after this discussion.

It was horrible to watch our tree fall. Piece by piece, amputated from the head to the roots, falling sometimes gracefully to the ground, sometimes crashing. Ernie dissected our maple tree until she was simply a stump sticking up from the ground like a giant's knuckle. As Ernie finished his dismantling, the other three scrambled around on the ground where the tree used to stand. Like ants searching for discarded crumbs from a picnic, the other three workers piled up limbs, branches and leaves. The youngest, who was also the smallest, seemed to be the guinea pig of the group. He got all the rough jobs. Mainly, it was his task to stack the largest of the cut logs, put them into a wheel barrow, and stack them once again around the side of our garage. I tried once again to strike up a conversation.

"So you get to be the strongback of the group?" I asked.

"Yeah, I'm the newest. I get all the jobs that the other (sphincter muscles) don't want to do."

"What's your name?" I walked with him to help him deliver his load of chopped limbs.

"Pete."

"Pete, do you mind if I make an observation?"

"Go ahead." He struggled to lift some of the biggest logs on to the pile.

"It doesn't appear as if your crew gets along very well."

Eddie looked at me out of the corner of his eye. Sweat dripped from his brow as the largest of the tree stumps thumped onto the red lava rock that covers the ground outside of our garage.

"Are you a fortune teller?" He smirked.

"Not that I know of," I said.

"The guys I work with are a bunch of (gluteus maximii). They show up, pretend to look busy, and boss me around. I'm fed up with it. I'm about to tell them to shove it (expletives deleted.)" He looked me over for a little bit and then continued. "I'm working two jobs, my girlfriend and I just had a baby, and I'm eight hundred dollars behind on rent. Those guys..." He shook his head.

From a distance I heard Pete being called back. "Pete. Get your lazy (bones) back here and keep working!" One of the others, who I assumed to be the leader of the crew had lit up a smoke and was waving to Peter. Peter mumbled under his breath and hefted his wheelbarrow back to the downed tree. As he made his way through the now trampled grass, the foreman began to lay into Peter. I couldn't here what he was saying, but body language spoke volumes. The foreman pointed his finger into Peter's face; his voice obviously raised, the capillaries in his face filled to full volume. After his verbal admonishment, the foreman walked over to where I was standing. With a stance of penitence the foreman said, "Sorry about that."

I raised my hand. "No problem." I had no idea what he was sorry about.

"He does this on most jobs. If he can chat up the owners, he'll tell them a sob story about his family situation. He hopes that the owners of the trees will feel pity for him and give him a secret bonus. This is his last warning. So, I truly apologize." If he would have been wearing a hat, it would have been in his hands, I think.

"Is his situation really as dire as he says it is?" I asked.

"Well, yeah," the foreman said. "But that's so unprofessional. Besides, if he gets tips on the side, where does that leave the rest of us." The foreman mumbled under his breath. Some form of curse against Peter, I think.

I waved him off over the chorus of chainsaws. "I hope you have a better day."

He didn't say a word.