From the Top (16 page)

If you don't know what a CombiTube is, it doesn't matter. It's enough to know that it's a tube we use to help air go in and out when air isn't going in and out. That's all we really want, isn't it? To keep the air going in and out? And to know that if we're having trouble making the air go in and out—literally, sure, but even more frequently figuratively—someone will come around to lend a hand.

I was over visiting my neighbors Tom and Arlene a while back and we were talking about how life tends to roll around in circles … although not perfect circles. Maybe it'd be more accurate to say life is elliptical. With an ellipse you get a little more wiggle room, and goodness knows the secret to happiness is a little more wiggle room.

I love to visit Tom and Arlene. Tom is eighty-two and spry; Arlene is a few years younger but her health is not the best. Often when we talk she is using oxygen, and you can hear the hiss of the tank in the background. Tom and Arlene have been married fifty-nine years now. Arlene says her goal has always been to make it to their sixtieth anniversary. Even with the strain of recent hospital stays showing on her face, you can see the resolve in her eyes.

Sixty years of marriage. It's nowhere near a world record, but it deserves a tip of the seed corn cap, that's for sure. I tried pinning Tom down once on love and how to find it and how to make it last, but for all his knowledge—Tom is one of the smartest fellows I've ever known—he turns into a silly seventh grader when you try to get serious with him on matters of life and love.

“Why do you figure you and Arlene were able to make it last so long, Tom?” I ask him.

“Weahhll, I always say love is a disease everyone gets,” he says. Then after waiting for a beat, he said, “Some people catch it quite often!”

Then he leaned forward in his chair and giggled at his own joke like a kid who just said something mildly naughty to his teacher, and it occurred to me that that attitude right there maybe had a lot to do with why he was still riding his bicycle a half a mile out to the mailbox and back every day at the age of eighty-two. The other day he told me, “I always tell people, I get up in the morning with nothin' to do, and by nighttime I'm only half done.”

I had a point to make about those circles, but I got off track and am running out of time. One of my favorite things about visiting Tom and Arlene is how time slides into irrelevance. Well, not complete irrelevance, because they have a cuckoo clock on the wall and it doesn't really go tick-tock-tick-tock, it goes squeak-tock-squeak-tock and then of course every once in a while the little door slams open and that bird shoots out to give a crazed toot or two, but rather than making you feel like you should be getting back to business in the real world, the clockworks yank the bird back out of sight and the message seems to be: Never mind, I can come back again later, go ahead and visit, life is a circle. Or an ellipse. Or a zigzag. Take your pick, and take your time.

Arlene did live to see her sixtieth wedding anniversary. She was fully present, and she celebrated in joy. A few months later she died at home, as she had also wished. To her last breath, Tom was at her side.

I went over to see my neighbor Tom the other evening. He recently lost his wife of some sixty years. I don't know how you quantify such a thing. I don't know how you remark on the echoes of such a departure without coming up short or obvious. I don't know that you even try.

I brought Tom a leftover pork chop that my wife had cooked. She and I are coming up on nine years married. I was thirty-nine when we took our vows, so barring my somehow making it to the century mark I'll likely not see sixty years of wedded union even if she'll have me that long. Tom thanked me for the pork chop and put it in the fridge with the other food accumulated since the funeral. It's only been a matter of weeks since Arlene died, so folks still drop in with a little something now and then, but Tom says it's tapering some, and I'm reminded of the friend who once told me, “The tough times start when the last casserole dish is returned.” We were speaking in the wake of the funeral for my brother's first wife. He lost her just seven weeks into their marriage.

With the pork chop in reserve, Tom and I sat on wooden chairs in the kitchen. The room smelled faintly of bacon, and
I could see the pan over there on the stove. Tom said he had taken advantage of two warm days to get some of the garden in, although he thought it was probably too early, as it was turning cold again, but he just felt like he had to get out there and put something in the dirt. Bought his seed up at Stockman Farm Supply, he said, and he's going to try growing some of those dipper gourds this year. That and some new radish he's never seen in all his eighty-plus years. He's had a black bear coming around again, and he wonders if it's the one he ran out of the yard last fall. There he was, an octogenarian clad in nothing but a pair of cutoffs, swinging a stick and hollering at that bear to get out of the birdseed while Arlene rolled her eyes in the kitchen. He hasn't actually seen the bear this spring, but one of his bird feeders was sprung and one of his beehives was busted.

Last year Tom lent me a book about gunpowder, and along with the pork chop I had finally brought the book back. As it sat on the kitchen table between us we marveled at the miracle of saltpeter and sulfur and charcoal combined and then meandered off on a joint stem-winder examining humans and history and the unwavering dedication mankind has maintained in refining the means of killing one another. The discussion wound up with that moment where you both just sit there and shake your head, a morose sort of unity that is unity nonetheless.

We shot the breeze a good forty-five minutes before I asked Tom how his spirits were. That was when he told me about the bacon he made that morning. He said it was the first batch he'd fried up since Arlene died, and the minute it hit the pan the scent and sizzle hit him pretty hard, as he always fried one slice for him and one for her.

Later I thought about my brother losing his wife after seven weeks and Tom after sixty years and how these griefs might compare. It's an unanswerable question, I suppose, and not mine to speculate. The immediately bereaved are the only ones qualified to have that conversation. I have said that both men “lost” their
wives, when in fact from what I have seen in their eyes it is they the living who are left lost.

As for the rest of us, we feel our way, trying to help, not really knowing how but hoping that maybe by sitting in the kitchen chair and conversing about nothing much and sharing in the sense of absence without necessarily saying so, we might somehow shine some dim light on the path forward.

Thanks to

Terry, Tom, Becky, and the entire Lake Superior Big Top Chautauqua bunch, from the Blue Canvas Orchestra and singers to stage and sound crew and all board members and volunteers

Jaime Hansen, who brings the studio right on out to the farm

Alissa Freeberg, for remarkable and conscientious assistance

Blakeley Beatty, for booking it

Karen Rose, for those other books

Kate, Kathy, Kristin, Elizabeth, and Ted at the Wisconsin Historical Society Press

John and Beth at the
Wisconsin State Journal

Al Ross, microphone sensei

Lisa and Dan at ICM

And my family, the ones I think of every time I say, “Back home on the farm …”

Michael Perry is the author of numerous books, including
Population: 485, Truck: A Love Story,
and the
New York Times
best-seller
Visiting Tom.
His live humor recordings include
Never Stand Behind a Sneezing Cow
and
The Clodhopper Monologues.
He lives in rural Wisconsin with his wife and daughters and is privileged to serve as a first responder with the local fire department. He can be found online at
www.sneezingcow.com
.