The Man On The Plane

I can always rely on a good trip away from the norm to entice me to write. There is so much new information to take in and enjoy and relate to and analyze!

I just returned from a software convention in Orlando, Florida. I saw so many old friends and began the process of getting to know even more, but that isn’t really where today’s thoughts come from. In fact it’s not from business at all.

I finished reading a book, “The Bottoms” by Joe R. Lansdale, while I was in Orlando. The words rolled so smoothly and eloquently through the pages. The story captivated me from the beginning and I enjoyed every syllable thereafter. The story was told in the 1st person; the adult man in a nursing home perhaps 82 years old. What a tale he had to tell! The events surrounding a serial murderer where he lived from birth were relayed with amazing clarity. He took this reader back to Texas when he was 12. My mind followed it vividly. The closing of the book was so powerful with the old gentleman pining for that time in his life when such evil reigned with the good. At least he was living life back then and not drudging through each day at a home for the aged.

I thought of a woman I met several years ago while volunteering at a nursing home. She was 101 years old with still a sharp mind and reasonable health. I only met with her a few times, but she would tell me stories about how her daddy was in charge of laying out plans for the new railroad tracks across America. He forged his company and his family ever westward and often they found themselves to be the first white people seen by the natives. They would travel through the small villages establishing ties with its residents. What an adventurous life!

On the first leg of my flight home from the conference, I sat with a man 88 years old. He was clear, concise and interesting! He had been temporarily banished from his daughter’s home in Florida because of an impending hurricane (Ivan). His son lives in Columbia and he was traveling there so as not to be a worry to his daughter. He talked about how he occasionally now would lose a word during a conversation. (Trying to find words is such a constant effort for me at 49 I’d forgotten to think of it as something wrong.) He may have been more astutely aware of it because his wife had passed away 7 years ago with Alzheimer’s. He looked so sad telling me about the events leading to her death that tears came to my eyes. They had three children and had been together 57 years. “Fifty-seven years and it wasn’t nearly enough time,” he said, and I could sense the well of loneliness; so painfully sweet.

There is such a fast and deep relationship between the young and society's elders. The bond seems immediate and mutual. I felt that bond with the man on the plane and the lady in the nursing home and the man in “The Bottoms”. I feel there is something important to be communicated. Maybe that’s why Mr. Lansdale wrote that book. Maybe he feels it too.

Written By Teri Lee
September, 2004