My favorite podcast released two episodes after having been dark for a while. The first one ended about four minutes from work, so it really soaked up the 90-minute drive and kept me properly distracted from my usual exit count down until I land in Miami-Zoo-ba. That was a plus.
I passed the same girl who walks to her bus stop every morning in this pretty little neighborhood. I remembered the day 3-4 years ago when it was pouring, and she reluctantly got close enough to my rolled down window to let me pass her an umbrella. Maybe the scrubs disarmed her from 'stranger danger'. Maybe she recognized me from the same drive by every morning and knew there was a hospital nearby, and took the chance that was I was an employee and not just a mental patient on a day pass on my last hurrah before stealing a young child and doing whatever scary people do once they purposefully steal a child. (Who does that? Ew.)
Maybe my glittery car trinkets let her know I was a helper. Maybe she could tell I was a mom- social worker who keeps extra food and umbrellas in my car for such an opportunity.
I noticed she was a teenager now. This could be her last year at the bus stop. It made me think how quickly time is passing and how little time I have left before I don’t have the luxury of all three offspring in the same safe space. I barely enjoy when one is at a sleepover, and the summer leaves a huge hole in my heart… but miles away? For good? I felt myself veering further from the practice of gratitude I vowed to work on this week. It’s barely Wednesday- not even fully hump day -and my barely furlough-able brow has already reached and stretched across my forehead to touch the other brow to find some empathic disdain…. It’s brow-ish fingertips slightly grazing the other before abandoning the maneuver altogether. (This Botox shit better make me fuggin gorgeous soon or I’m going to just be ugly and expressionless).
I forced myself to stay present and soak it in. I reminded myself of the moments during my last pregnancy when I felt uncomfortable, and I’d warn myself to remember the feeling of (the third) moving and kicking.
“Enjoy it a little, Sam…” I commanded to myself, and I would. I already knew what it was like when babies come to the surface and how quickly that little blob stage goes. I hadn’t resigned to it being “my last” before, so I hadn’t thought to actually enjoy the whale-ish discomfort of my exploding body as the “last chance” I’d "get to" feel so disproportionate and GERDy.
‘Eternally fatigued and kvetching’ was an ancestral gift from my sepia-toned Jews. This was my only shot at having a legitimate excuse to bitch about that stuff. I reminded myself of the impermanence of everything and not to waste the time lamenting the finality of it and to stay present to soak it in before these moments are just tire tracks and shrinking images in the rearview mirror.
I knew I wanted to get home earlier than yesterday. Hang with the kids. Watch a movie, maybe? The day bled on, and more trials piled on. Not finishing one task would mean it would fall onto tomorrow’s shit pile. More emails came. The inner argument started. More things I could maybe knock out now. Maybe tomorrow would be easier if I just did it now? I’d have more time tomorrow to find things to be grateful for. But with the car ride home, I’d be home after dark. Another missed day. One day closer to an empty nest and then I’d really be kicking myself for choosing work over precious time. Eh. Who am I kidding? They’re in their rooms and just going to ignore me when I get home anyway… work wins again.
The friendly security guard I’ve befriended walked by at the start of his shift…. 4PM. Then, 4:30. He said, “Sam, go home.”
“I am. I am. Two more minutes.”
I’m not impeding anything for his work shift. The 3-11 has already started their dinner and bed routines. He was just that guy who knows I work too late, my colleagues were long gone, and maybe needed to be shaken from the routine to remember that I have a life outside of this room, too.
As I looked up and watched 4:30 turn into 6, I felt an overwhelming sense of defeat. My security guard friend walked by again and looked at his watch and shook his head at me.
“Go make dinner, Sam.”
“I am. I will. You’re right.”
He stood vigil to make sure I turned everything off and committed this time. He walked me out as we chatted. Every day since he’d come back to work, he’d linger a little and give me a long hug. I’d look deep in his eyes and ask, “you good?”
“I’m good. Day by day…” he’d chime back, as though you pushed a pre-programmed button on an animatronic. A well-rehearsed line he used as a mantra; a blanket response to evade all the broken pieces he hadn’t yet to form into words that could even remotely explain how good he wasn’t and how this day felt like the last day and just like tomorrow will. He probably couldn't tell you which day of days by days today is...or was. But it's corporate pleasantry that says, 'thanks for bringing it up again; you likely mean well, but FFS..." Or maybe he was happy that I asked.
We made a point to see each other every day he worked since he was back. Our eyes would meet and I’d give a nod that let him know I didn’t know exactly, but I know and acknowledged him in ways that made him feel seen without forcing him to talk.
Everyone forced themselves on him: Police. Media Circus Clowns. Legal teams from all over the nation hoping to get a nab at counsel for the trending story. Curious colleagues that hadn’t been able to tell him apart from the other security guard until they heard from someone who heard from CNN who read it on Twitter… "OMG. What haaaaapened???" <cringe>
He was just “Perry” the less douchey security guard who “came from corrections.”
Corrections: A section of the Miami-Dade County jail system within our hospital sanctions; meaning employees simultaneously have street cred for working in the worst part of the county's system, but also lessened integrity for being employed by a division we have all come to know as a disorganized shitshow.
Corrections: Nursing, security, social workers: all set up in a county-wide cost code to appear as some rehabilitative program endorsing crowd safety and community restoration when it is really more of a rat cage wreaking of recidivism.
Corrections: It’s the armpit of our “health system.” It’s the McDonalds of culinary arts. It’s the Lunchable of charcuterie boards. It’s the fart joke book wedged between the pages of an Encyclopedia of Historical Arts. It’s the Cats of musicals. It’s the ‘surf and turf’ in the smoking section of a 24-hour diner with a 40-paged menu; circa 1987... in Hallandale. You get what I mean.
I’d only known him as the less annoying security guard who likes to grab candy from my office loot each night and would help remove some of the more challenging patients from my office when my patience was thin. Annoying meaning anyone who has to knock on my OPEN door and interact with me to ask for candy and pull me out of my trance. It should be evident that it is for everyone, and it is placed far enough away to avoid human interaction. Ughk.
He always seemed familiar. I realized he was cooler than most of the shitty people I hid from on the daily. I almost looked forward to our 3-second banter and saying bizarre things to make him nod and laugh. He seemed like the token Dillard-friend that I would latch on to in non-arts classes. Classes that I would get through by making fart sounds to make people laugh and break up the monotony of the lessons, that as a teenager, I clearly already knew. <hair toss> Teachers loved me. <not> Behold, the karmic curse that I now share a life with a teacher who spends hours ventilating about the assholes that I pioneered.
Suddenly, the amiable security dude was gone for a while. I asked about him a few times. I wondered if he was on the revolving belt of security guards that sought greener pastures up at “Main” where they could chase down real addicts and feel like they had something more meaningful to do than slow walk up to awnry quads who don't adhere to 'regulations.'
The whispers started...
“You haven’t heard?”
“Heard what?”
“About Perry?”
Honestly, I wasn’t even sure I knew that THAT was his name. Mind you, I don’t know half the names of the CNAs and RNs I’ve spent the better part of the last four years with. I’ve been held up in my office and the names on group emails I consult with every day come equipped with awkward, first day on the job profile pictures that no one in their 30 years of service bothers to update. So, we get to see how happy, young and thin Maria in accounting was, 30 years ago, on her first day in HR, before she became the fat, gray hag that talks loudly in the hallways about her string of cruises she booked for her 72nd birthday before she goes into the drop program (a sweet way of saying “forced retirement” for those who fucking refuse to leave and give the rest of us the same shot at a lifetime of desk misery). But I digress.
Everyone else has been peripheral; scenery. I notice non-patients only after it’s been a while. I notice them with the same vigor as when I notice when "Recreation" takes the Halloween decorations down to put up generic fall leaves and turkeys only just before they slowly morph into the red and green glittery quadrupled stapled, yellowed and torn reminders of another holiday we’ll spend in these closed quarters. Another Covid threat thwarting residents from attending family gatherings and forced to feasting on turkey loaf on a decorative, disposable lunch tray as the staff desperately makes an attempt at creating enough magic to illude residents into thinking they haven’t landed at their final stop. Christmas dollar store trinkets, tricking them from succumbing to something they couldn’t have imagined as their destiny when they were 8-9-10-year olds opening personalized presents at home with a family long gone. Huzzah, Christmas.
Dammit.
GRATITUDEGRATITUDEGRATITUDEGRATITUDEGRATITUDEGRATITUDE
Do you see why I needed this exercise?
I had looked up and noticed the Cupid pepto pink and GI bleed red-vomited walls screaming that it was officially Valentine's season before I noticed the badge of my fave (ok, least loathed) security guard’s read “Sean Perry.” All this time, I didn’t really know his name. Not really. But I knew it was him when they clarified, "You mean Perry? You didn't hear?"
I knew that they meant him.
My phone had been ablaze with so much. Code Grays and Code Blacks at the kid’s schools. Sebastian relentlessly asking me if I knew if the threat was real or just a drill. Seeing real panic in his texts as he filled me in about each hide-fight-cover-whispered maneuver to outlive an active shooter. I remember the day I sang at Shooters (ironically); sitting inside their oddly carpeted area sectioned off for duos before they became the boujie brunch bitch fest they’ve grown to be. We sat on our stools, and I half-heartedly marked a song I’ve sung a hundred times to the three people at the bar (2/3’s being staff) while my eyes were reading headlines on the tv in front of us.
I watched first graders running for their lives and parents screaming on phones and waiting to hear news about their babies. Sandy Hook. I could barely contain myself. I ended the set short.
I had to find out more.
Check on my kids.
Stifle the panic and horror of what was unfolding.
I feel like that was the first one for me. I know it wasn’t first in the grand scheme of the hashtag school shooting trend, but that was the first one I felt. I had three single-digit- aged kids in preschool and I felt each scream from each parent as though it was stabbing into me. Ah, the life of an empath.
Babies. Slaughtered.
It felt like Stoneman Douglas was like three minutes later.
My kids at school. Real school now. Where sad, hurt people go to hurt people.
The panic and fear overwhelmed me.
The researching every picture, victim, reason, perpetrator… I was a maniac.
I was obsessed. I was wrapped in fear and panic and sadness and a deep mourning; absorbing every ounce of these tragedies as they became public. I googled the parents and found their Facebook pages- before they became memorials to their losses. Just to see what normal looked like before comments flooded in and their profile pictures became flags of new causes to mark their new missions, flooded by comments of strangers and voyeurs sending thoughts and prayers. I was sickened by how many I found that had mutual friends with me. I was shocked how close I was to so much nationally mourned grief and yet, there was still a sheath between me and them. Parkland is drivable, but still far enough to not be “here-here.”
I had a thespian competition at S.D. one high school year, and I felt miles away from belonging to that community. Maybe I was lamenting that I felt so impoverished and under-privileged compared to their upper-middle classed contingency. I drew short lines to show correlations within short proximity. Now, I couldn’t wish to be farther removed from the safety of my naïveté. I'd take low-class smut who couldn't hang at a good school if it meant I'd stay closer to safety.
Maybe the lack of truly knowing the parents and being able to attend their grief made it less real, farther away in proximity, somehow. 2, 3 mutual friends with people I barely speak to… excuses to salve my fear and trick myself into thinking it could never have been my babies…
I don’t remember how deep I delved into Perry’s story the night it broke. I don’t know if I saw the victims’ faces before I knew how closely connected I was going to be to this one. I don’t know if terms like “football” or “college” made it less tragic, less relatable than a classroom of first graders, or less poignant than a school I had actually been to. Maybe I’d just become anesthetized to the series of shooting events that had mauled my media as frequently as I’d hear about another public political shaming. I faintly recall stepping into the story before fatalities were confirmed and before the suspect was found. I think a school shooting had happened right before and right after. I wasn’t sure which one to mourn first. I’d grown numb. I’d preferred the perfectly packaged storyline of a Dateline podcast, where it would all be tied up within the hour; and those stories were long enough ago that I knew how the trial turned out... and felt safe because dates like 2001 are like a hundred years ago… I can almost convince myself that because it’s entertainment, it’s not real-real. It can’t be, right? We wouldn’t let this go on and on and just keep playing the game of life and dodging and kneeling at the right minute in hopes to make it another round. Right? Right?
The story I shook my head at and counted in a series, this one was as close as I had ever been and I had no clue.
There were three.
Perry wasn't here, because he was there: identifying his baby and packing up his dorm.
Perry wasn't here because he was there: preparing to bring his baby home. In a box.
When Perry came back, I was surprised. I wasn’t sure he would ever be back. I wasn’t sure how anyone could go about life after that. But as quickly as I noticed him gone, he returned…maybe it was a month. Maybe 3. I’d resigned to never getting to Part Two from the “to be continued” ending of that story. Closure wasn’t mine to gain. I imagined him in early retirement. Cancelling the cruises or whatever people do when they stop working… and just sitting in silence until the lights went out. How else do you get up and keep going after that? How do you channel the rage? How do you breathe when your lungs are punctured? How do you stop replaying the events and not... Just, how...? How?
I watched as the patients dabbed him; well-intended administrators hugged him. He hid behind his surgical mask, pacing the halls and checking doors in a well-choreographed routine he’d done for long enough to perform without much thought.
He’d graciously nod at the sympathetic eyes and sad stares at him, almost comforting everyone else by shrugging off his grief and assuring everyone he was OK. He’d exchange gratitude and bashfully go about the usual routine seemingly preferring blending into the scenery and not really being of too much use. What a shitty thing to be the most popular employee for… He was "Perry" the "shorter security guard." Now, he is Sean Perry, father of D'Sean Perry: murdered college student.
I mean, how violent can a wheelchair- bound stroke victim really be when pinned against a 97-year-old dementia patient with a feeding tube? How important is "security" here?
Security at a skilled nursing facility is more of a retardant against the fake fire. The resistance against the make-believe water. Fire and Water Safety in an outlet-less room with neither fire (or oxygen) or water, is clearly a decoy. Your role is to be furniture. You are meant to adorn the google map snapshot into the seemingly secure, peacock laden 5-star facility virtual brochure that says:
“Bro, sure. You can leave mom/grandma/Uncle Albert here guiltlessly, forever, and just carry on with your able-bodied, ungrateful lives while you spend your inheritance and visit on holidays to the disgruntled looks of the workers who clean her daily and think you’re a rotten kid.”
“Security” won’t be called to disarm more than an incontinent, edentulous abandoned mother-in-law from throwing a milk carton at an attitudinal CNA. Actually, It’s the perfect job for someone who is grieving. There are no measurable goals. You clock in, clock out. Pace the route and appear as menacing as one can in a rent-a-cop uniform with a walky talky that has two call buttons: one to an environmental supervisor who clocked out at 3P and the other to a front desk half-witted receptionist who is anything but receptive. She guards the front desk area with as much vigor as the daytime security guard sitting across from her with his feet on the desk who rolls his eyes when asked to pause Candy Crush to accompany the thieving transportation attendants to thwart them from stealing our gloves supply when they callously dump the dialysis patients back in their beds.
Perry could just blend in and grieve in silence.
He came back. We met eyes.
I didn’t look at him with the same pitiful, “omg I can’t even… you must be sooooo sad. I can’t imagine what that’s like because my life is still in tact but I should totally pout for you right now” look.
I looked at him. I squinted a little and grabbed his hand. He looked back and he broke a little…
I said, “I’m here.”
He said, “I know.”
He smiled and comforted me, excusing me from having to say or do anything beyond that. Ever since then, we hugged whenever we would see each other. He would stop in and make it seem like I needed the hug. Sometimes I did. Sometimes I’d ask him for hug when I had a bad day, maybe sensing that he needed it, too.
He seemed more present lately. Grabbing candy and checking in on me. Maybe hoping I would dump my trivial head clutter on him and not spare him from the mundane because comparatively, his life was way shittier. Maybe that's what he wanted, some normalcy. It’s like we just stopped acknowledging “it”. Last time I nodded to see if he was ok and almost pried for the non-proverbial answer. He reluctantly shrugged and said something about the trial to politely appease me.
I didn’t press.
It is coming up.
October, he thinks.
That was all that needed to be said.
I wasn’t his direct colleague. I’m a clinical director in Administration. We have two different roles. Two varying cost codes. Yet… I feel closest to him than most.. (at work).
Yet we have said the least to one another. Not in a partner way. Not in a sister or dad/daughter way. Just some weird energetic connection of grief and understanding and not equal-but also not dissimilar. He says stuff and I hear it. It’s hard to grasp. He’s not my best friend or anything dramatic like that. I only know-know what everyone else does…. But cosmically, I feel more. He knows nothing about me; not even a little. But he knows I’m full of shit when I say, "I'm OK." He knows when I’m hurting from stuff I can’t and shouldn't talk about. He gets it. Sometimes it's nice just to sit in the silence with someone else who is hurting and not try to fix the unfixable, but just share the space, the void. There is safety in the fact that he is older, married, grieving, of a whole other culture than me. There is no hidden agenda. There is no notice of gender or race. It's just a person-thing. I'm over-explaining.
He was a silent celebrity for the worst kind of fame. I could feel we were connected by everything we didn’t have to say to one another. It wasn’t a competition. He’s suffered the ultimate loss and yet, I was still entitled to be overworked and overwhelmed and emotionally tapped out. This was a piece of connection I had been missing for so long. I didn't have to draw from the bank of pain to drudge up old wounds to match his or justify why something small could be devastating to me while he dealt with the literal worst thing ever. It didn't mean I was obliged to be his therapist and bury my own shitty life. I was just as entitled to feel however I inexplicably felt, and he could be near to that pain- and it didn't need to match up.
When I attended NA and AA and ALANON and ALATEEN meetings in grad school (curriculum). My experiences didn't always match the attendants' and thus, I wasn't entitled to my own pain. I didn't have to suck d*ck for crack or sleep under a bridge, so I wasn't entitled to the journey in discovery of addiction or the pain of being parented by an addict.
Perry never had to look at me and make some grand motion to relay how shitty his day was (and will be forever and ever…) We are just joined in some weird unspoken grief. Even if my grief is just disenfranchised grief.
Only I know about his…. And he knows so little of me. A much older black man. Some sort of law enforcement background. Christian. Married to a woman named “Happy” and has two daughters left. Left. Fuck..
I’m a much younger white chick with an age complex. Who knows wtf is known about what I actually do all day to the hallway voyeur? What is actually on the screen that I stare into all day or why the line forms outside my door with patients who sometimes just come to vent? It’s just a vibe. I don’t have to share my resume. I don’t have to warn him of why my ex best friend thinks I’m shit, and he likely will, too. He doesn’t care. No agenda. It stops and starts with a shared moment in a hallway. As mundane as the weather talk.
It's hot again, today.
Did you see the downpour? That should be fun to drive in.
You good?
The answers are either “meh” or “YeH.”
Today, I’d only collected my one good moment that had sort of been wrapped up in sad:
Aww the umbrella girl is growing up! Fuck, my kids are aging out and I’m dying and steps away from an empty nest and even closer to death.
I’d been struggling identifying positives in a day that started too early, made me miss all the nurse week festivities (free shirts and paella??!) and be stuck in my little dorm room way later than anyone else would bother to. Perry escorted me out. He could see I was wiped out. I asked how he was. I was looking forward to listening to the second podcast and zoning out during a traffic-less car ride since it was now 300 o'clock.
We meandered towards the exit. I realized I was drowning in my own shit and forgot to ask how he was...
“Day by day…”
Something told me not to take that. Not today.
“No. Like how ARE you?”
And he stopped.
And he let it all out. The door I had been desperately running towards all day was inches away, and we talked in that hallway for 30 minutes.
He detailed the day it happened. The phone call his wife had with him 20 minutes before. How he got home at 10:23-10:28pm, as per usual, because when his shift ended, he was so close to home. He spoke about how his wife mentioned talking to him and he was just on his way home on a charter bus from seeing a play and said goodnight because his phone was dying. How his Twitter feed blew up with news of a campus shooting by 11:15PM.
UVA. Active Shooting in Progress.
He texted him, “You good up there?” No response. But he had just told his mom that his phone was dying, not him. He was fine. Had to be.
Fatalities reported.
No word.
3:52am was when they’d hear the news that his only son, D’Sean Perry had been one of the three promising college kids murdered that night by a student they didn’t even know. He told me about D’Sean. How he heard that he was hero who tried to tackle the gunman down so others could leave the bus. How his best friend escaped and came back to try to save him and got shot but lived to tell the tale. How he flew there within hours to identify his body, clean out his dorm room and make arrangements for his body to come home to Florida while they sorted out the legal stuff. He told me about the interviews and the meddling people who “don’t even know (me) like that” who preyed with questions they felt entitled to ask. He assured me it was ok if I asked, reaffirming our unspoken connection. We talked about gun violence and how D’Sean was always outspoken about his stance on that topic. A prophecy, perhaps.
He told me about the art and history D’Sean loved. He spoke about his clay model artistry and how he always wanted to do a charitable event that gave kids bikes. He told me how his family was able to raise the money to donate 175 bikes to kids in his name. He spoke about his intellect and his collegiate prowess far beyond the athletic achievements touted by the media. He spoke about how kind he was and the big dreams he had.
He lamented that his wife was attending the graduation this year and walking for him. He said that he was attending some art exhibit memorial thingy later this year and then wrapping up the school negligence settlement, and then gearing up for the trial. He said he hoped the kid didn’t hold up proceedings by claiming to be incompetent or something like what he’s seen from the finest masterminds of Miami’s douchiest derelicts. #Corrections.
When he spoke about his talents, I felt tingles go up my arms and he told me he can still feel him all around us. I felt him, too, in that moment. I asked him if he liked being asked about him, if he liked to talk about him, you know, apart from this one, terrible defining day. He said yes. I noticed how he spoke about him in the present tense. What he likes, what he does throughout his day. He caught himself the first time, but I didn’t shutter. I let him speak and held space for him while D'Sean was here now and there, then.
I felt like the luckiest person in the world. As different as we are, as little as we truly know about the other, we’d crossed some energetic force field and through months of silence, I’d cracked through his proverbial responses used to hush the annoying well-intended cohorts who vapidly swim through their emotional puddles, wading carelessly near to one another, either asking too intimate of questions and picking at scabs on days he’d rather just wear his costume and play his part before getting the wind knocked from him with the heavy reminders he had been trying to escape for a just a fricken moment.
Or perhaps they’d forgotten already. They figured enough time had passed and it wasn’t relevant to them anymore. The press leaked the answers to their questions and he wasn’t someone to handle as carefully. There is a fine line of maintaining normalcy by not calling out the bleeding-heart puddles that are flooding the hallways and yet being present enough to lower the mask and offer the stillness and acceptance to be as vulnerable or stoic as one needs to be as they ebb and flow through grief’s path. As a Thanatologist, I don’t always get it right. I feel like I did today.
He told me some heavy-hearted things that I will keep to the chest. But mostly, he told me about what the media didn’t say: how brilliant he was. How artistic. He told me about all the ways they keep him alive; by working to help people and secure a better world in his honor. He told me how his life had a purpose, and that while it left their hearts broken, that maybe he came and did exactly what he was meant to do in this life. I felt him there. I saw his hand on his dad’s shoulder as he teared up, but not too much.
Perry looked around him, ensuring he wasn't going to miss something he was supposed to be doing as a very-needed security guard on the 3-11 shift. He nodded like we do when we say stuff with our eyes, letting me know when it was time for me to go home. We hugged. He got my number and shot me a few texts of articles about D’Sean’s art and interviews about the charitable events in his name. As I typed this last sentence, he sent me one last text to share a video of D'Sean speaking. He thanked me for embracing him.
“Stay in touch. We’re locked in now.” He texted.
Sean Perry.
He was all 1-16 great things today. He reminded me of who I am, what is important. He reminded me that my loneliness may not just be about the absence of one or more particular people in my life. He made me realize that maybe I have been lonely for a long time because where I was drowning in company, I lacked true connection. He crossed over to where I was locked up in self-loathing, where I couldn’t find a single reason why to be anything but relieved the day was ending. He met me in a moment when I couldn’t find purpose or meaning. He reached out when I was sliding backwards into the mud pile I’d worked so hard to draw myself out of with an exercise in gratitude. Yesterday was cupcakes and sequins and today was fearing the future and fatigue and before I could scream as I ran out of the door, but he pulled me back in to this shithole for another 30 minutes past my 4 hours of overtime to share in a moment of grief that should have absolutely been the straw that broke my back. Instead, he shared something with me that no one else got in his stoic, proud "nunya business" stance he gave to everyone else, and he saved me.
And I stepped back in, met him where he was at, and then I saved him right back.
And it was everything Wednesday was supposed to teach me.
And for Sean …and D’Sean, I am grateful.
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