My dear, sweet husband had the kindest heart of anyone I have ever known. If you needed it and he had it, you were certainly welcome to it. Once, I was a blindly trusting person as well, but have seen so many scams that I have become jaded. But not him. If someone approached him with a story about a hardship and asked for help, he would give freely of what he had. And that is how I have become the proud owner of numerous items I lovingly refer to as 'truckstop treasures'.
W was a truck driver by profession and over his career had run as a single independent and also had run a small fleet. One of his many dreams was to own a larger fleet of trucks, but the most we ever had at one time was four. In my opinion, that was three too many. The added compliance issues, employee headaches, equipment failures, and economic pressures made it much too challenging to be either fun or profitable. In the end, he had come to the same realization as well.
Over the years, he has brought me many interesting items he has acquired throughout his travels, in addition to some crazy stories and observations. He would come home after a trip and show me a ring he had been bought from someone who needed gas money. Or the gawdy (read "pimp") watch that someone sold him from his (questionably attained) inventory. He would call me from the road and tell me about someone selling radios, or software, or in one case a computer. Now THAT was a good story! Seems this person had new (with security tape) computers for sale for $300. He was a sucker sometimes, and this was the biggest sucker purchase he ever made. He bought the box. Yeah, the box, because it was filled with nothing more than old newspapers. By the time he realized the scam, the offender was gone. I kidded him about that every time he called me about another "deal."
There was not a day that went by over the last year that he was not approached at the truck stop for money for food. The economy had gotten so bad, especially in this industry, that people were having a real hard time, including us. But that didn't stop him from handing over a pocketful of change. Or he would buy someone some food if they asked.
And his kindness extended beyond his travels. He was so supportive of the issues with my mother before she died.....much more than I wanted to be in a few instances (another long, horrible story I may never get to.) For those of you with wonderful mothers and great relationships with them, cherish them because you are lucky. When my sister was abandoned by her husband (on Christmas Eve, no less), he gladly welcomed her into our home. He gave of his time and talent to the school band program. He was always there to lend a hand.
And I loved him for all of those reasons.....and many, many more.
Tonight I went through the drawer. His drawer. The top dresser drawer where the stuff goes. You know, the stuff. Like jewelry and birthday cards and prayer cards and, well, stuff. There was a cloth bag with a draw string that looked curious. Oh yeah, forgot about that.....the rosary he held at the memorial service. How could I forget about that? A souvenir Mickey Mouse watch from Disney World that his brother gave him last year. A Swiss Army knife. Another one of those truck stop treasures (as I called them). More on that later. And of course, a stack of business cards. The usual stuff that he would accumulate throughout his travels and purchases. But there was this one card that I can't figure out. So I set it aside to deal with later, and now it is later. How peculiar. I wonder what it means?
The card is from a funeral home in Mexico, MO. We lived near St. Louis a few years back, but we have lived in Houston, TX for seven years. Normally I wouldn't think much of the card, except it has the home phone number hand written on the front of the card and the name is Connie.
Now my mind is beginning to rev up with the "what does it mean" questions and many possible answers. Here it is almost 3:30 in the morning and I will probably not get any sleep. Great.
I looked up the funeral home on Google and found this:
In 1967 Connie Pickering purchased a half-interest in the funeral home from Earl Precht. Connie, his wife Barbara, and their son David, moved into the apartment above the funeral home, and Connie took over the management of the funeral home.
OK, so I can rule out one of the questions/answers in my head. But a half dozen others are knocking around my mind and driving me crazy.
I have to explain a few things in order to put this all in perspective. My husband and I became avid fans of sailing many years ago. That was after we had been avid campers. And avid motor boaters. But there was something about sailing that touched both of our souls. We chartered a monohull out of Tortola BVI a few years back for two weeks and that pretty much sealed the deal for us. We have dreamed of living on a boat, doing some coastal sailing for a few years and then making a passage, possibly to Europe. Our house had been on the market when he died, with our plans to move to his family homestead to help with his mother and brother and in general be closer to family.
One evening, about a week before he died, he was surfing the net and found a beautiful boat for sale in the Caribbean that was perfect for us. The price was right, the deal sounded right, and the timing was right. He called his mother and asked if she would be upset if we bought the boat instead of moving home. She knew how much he wanted to do the sailboat; this was not a surprise to her. Her response to him was "do whatever makes you happy." And she genuinely meant it. She and her husband had only been retired two years when he passed away from an aortic aneurysm while they were fulfilling their dream of full time RVing. She told anyone who would listen that if there was something you wanted to do, then do it because you never know what will happen.
Then he died. A week after this conversation with his mother, he was gone. Ten days after having cataract surgery in one eye he was dead. Three days before he was to have the cataract removed from the other eye, he would never see again. I am so thankful that he had those days to see clearly. He would marvel at the clarity of his sight and the vibrant colors. He was in awe and I was thrilled for him. And I enjoyed taking care of him and having him home for those last weeks all to myself. But he died dammit!
About a month after he died, I decided to tackle cleaning and organizing the garage. He was a real man's man.....a mechanic, parts hoarder (working or not), a do-er, and a collector of tools. OK, I'll admit it, power tools were our thing. We both would get excited about buying a new tool and for my last birthday he bought me a plunge router that I have been hinting at for some time. But I digress.
Our garage was a mess. It had old, dilapidated kitchen cabinets along one wall that were only useful for stuffing things into, never to be found again. So I went to removing them, putting in something more useful and hauling two pick up truck loads of scrap metal to the recycle center. And weeding through buckets of bolts, nuts, screws, things of the I-have-no-idea-what-they-are variety, wire, wood, and coffee cans of stuff. As I was sorting through things, I happened upon a box that was taped closed and from a storage place that I later recognized as being in Missouri. It obviously had been stored in the garage since our move to Texas. As I opened it, the first thing I found was a couple of paper envelopes from the local drug store containing photographs....pictures from our chartered sail trip to the BVI. And then there was this one picture of him sitting at our kitchen table in Missouri just looking into the camera. Not smiling, but just looking serious, studious, matter-of-fact. It was eerie seeing that photo. Anyway, the next thing under the photos was his life insurance policy. I started crying. Below that were 40 or 50 magazines from his subscriptions to various sailing magazines. And then his sailing manual. Now I'm really crying. A little more digging and I came across a book by Dave Ramsey (Financial Peace).....that's a whole other story.....and then the repair manual for his pickup truck. More magazines.....and then the kicker. At the bottom of the box, in the corner were some CDs by Manheim Steamroller. Christmas CDs. His favorite. By now I have totally lost it, I am bawling. I'm sure if the neighbors had wandered over, they would have wondered why I'm sitting in the garage crying like a baby.
The significance of the Christmas music has to do with our desire over the past seven or eight years of wanting to basically run away during Christmas and go sailing, rather than participate in the commercialization of the holiday. He would tell his mom and kids to save their money and instead of buying gifts, let's take a trip. But we never did. And now, here was this box.....this box of treasures. His stuff. The stuff that was important to him. And I'm still crying; crying at finding this treasure; crying because I am seeing this as a sign...the sign from him I have been so desperately look for and not finding. And the music on the radio suddenly changes to the theme song for Rush Limbaugh. Someone he knows I despised listening to, but he enjoyed, and he loved to torment me with whenever the opportunity presented itself. The timing was incredible. All I could do was laugh at that point.
And now I have found this business card. This card for a business over 100 miles from where we lived. With the home phone number of the funeral director written on it. What does it mean? We went camping and boating near Mexico one time. Well sort of near Mexico; I know we passed through there. But I can't remember needing the services of a funeral home during that trip. Who is this person?
I keep thinking back to the time we lived in Missouri and he got sick, so sick that I called 911. He was dizzy and vomiting and all I could think was I will never be able to get him up the stairs and into the car and drive 30 miles to the hospital if there was something terribly wrong with him. Him, the man who never got sick. But he was very sick. Something with his heart, but they could never determine exactly what was wrong. He spent four days in the hospital having all kinds of tests done and in the end it was determined that he had an episode of an irregular heartbeat but there was nothing to fix, treat, or be worried about. I wonder if I should contact them and let them know they were wrong. There was most definitely something wrong with his heart. It just quit working. One minute he was here and the next he was gone.
And I can't stop staring at this damn business card.
