I’ve written about Georgia before; Watson is his given name. After you load up your lumber you have to pass by George and wait while he matches your sales receipt to what is in your truck. When he finishes, he snaps the pink copy from the white and hands you the white. As he says, and I know this from experience, he’s not only looking for stolen goods, he’s making sure you leave with all you paid for. However, Concord Lumber didn’t have a guy in a guard box eight years ago, before the men in trench coats helped themselves to half a dozen nail guns.
Georgia is way past retirement age. He works because he hates to sit, and I suspect, because he needs more than his wife to talk to. Unless there are trucks pushing your rear bumper, you can’t say, “Hi” and “Bye.” I don’t even attempt to. We’ve talked about : his garden at home, the flower boxes he maintains next to the guard shack, where I’m working, his truck, my truck, other guy’s trucks, driving into Boston ( he’ll never do that again), and so on. Mostly small talk. Today I had more up my sleeve.
I rolled down my window and Georgia asked,
“What’s new and different in your life?”
“Georgia, how do you deal with loss?”
“Lost? When something is lost?”
“No, loss. As in death. When people die, how do you deal with that?”
“You just do. It’s a common thing. It happens a lot.”
“I know it happens a lot, but you’ve experienced more of it than I so I figured you’d have some ideas. Pearls of wisdom?”
I could see he’d been prepared to roll eyes when I told him I was working in a far off suburb, not to answer this kind of question. But then he began… .
“My father died when he was eighty-six from a heart attack. That’s how I hope I go. My mother took seven years to die. It was agony. But she was ninety-seven, as was her mother when she died. My wife’s sister died last year. She had oldtimer’s disease. She didn’t know nothing from nothing, and I mean nothing.”
“She had what?”
“Oldtimer’s disease. And I think my older sister, Doris, has a touch of that. I was talking to her, she lives in College Park, a suburb of…”
“Somewhere in Maryland…”
“Atlanta. She told me she was having four boys over to play cards. I thought, that doesn’t make sense, so I asked her, how old are these boys? She said, ‘Young fellas.’ I let it go at that and then I called my younger sister.”
“How old is Doris?”
“She’s eighty-four.”
“And your younger sister?”
“I think about seventy-four.”
“And how old are you, Georgia?”
“I’m eighty-two.”
“Jesus, they are going to have shoot you to get you to leave. I didn’t know you were eighty-two.”
“And everything changed at eighty-two. Eighty-one, I was fine, but as soon as I hit eighty-two… . I get tired now, I can’t do as much.”
“Back to Doris… .”
“I told my younger sister about ‘the boys.’ She had asked me earlier if I’d noticed anything strange about Doris, and I told her, yes, but I couldn’t quote anything. This time I could. You know what? My younger sister told me those young fellas aren’t boys, they are dogs.”
“And I bet they don’t play cards.”
Georgia laughed.
“No, I don’t suppose so. They had to move Doris into a …what do you call it…not convalescent home, but … .”
“Assisted living?” He didn’t know he was talking to an expert on the subject.
“That’s it! She was living in a big house, a nice house, and you know what happened when they moved her?”
I could only guess.
“She had a fit.”
