As we’re getting to know someone, and this process can take years, we start to see into their brain. Everything from their preferences, wishes to their values and morals. Here are a few of Tom’s.
Tom LOVED hard work. He thought if you try hard enough at something that you’re good enough at, you’ll achieve at least a little something to be proud of and this will propel you forward. Give you some momentum. And maybe thru a cycle of trying and winning you’ll find something you’re sufficiently good at, can get paid for, and doesn’t cost your soul.
Tom also thought you should slow down and savor life. Anytime I visited his house on the lake, he’d pontificate on the importance of stopping to smell the roses, stare out at the lake, and take in the sun. Oh and bike around—he loved to bike. This softer side complimented his harder grindstone side.
Tom also loved to clean his boat and believed if you took care of something with regular maintenance and cleaning, it would last forever. Every time I was on his boat it felt like it was always glistening. He cared about his car too. He kept it pretty clean, mainly up front, and brought it into the dealership more often than anyone else I know.
But Tom was also cheap. He loved free food and I watched him on at least two occasions steal coffee from hotel lobbies. When he headed out west on his yearly spring road trip, I imagine him basically living for free finding loop hole after free loophole. He loved to talk about all the cheap motels he’d stay at and how they were really actually very nice.
Tom loved to master a system and outsmart the man. He’d talk about negotiating the best motel rates, figuring out how to balance transfer between credit cards to avoid ever paying interest while leaving most of his cash in the stock market.
Tom disliked people he didn’t know. He thought the neighbors were too loud and always putting in their dock wrong. And that the family across the street was weird—they were just eccentric progressives. And when he went in and out of assisted living and doctors offices the last decade of his life, he complained about, depending on where people were from, how they didn’t know how to work with people the right way.
But if Tom knew you, he loved you. And he tried to express it paradoxically like the rest of him. He loved hard work but also wanted you to slow down. He kept things clean but also in a constant state of disarray like only a bachelor could. He was cheap but also always had a new Mercedes and gave great gifts. He’d be gruff with you over the most mundane things and then love you a second later. He had two strong opposing sides in him that competed to make sense of his life. And this continued to the end.
During his last fitful moments of delirium when he was talking in his sleep and constantly dreaming, he’d mumble about seeing his mom and favorite pets. But then yell “cocksucker!” like he was fighting an invisible foe. Two opposing kinds of nature—just as always.
Tom lives on in my head, and I can hear him as I go thru life making decisions and carving out my own map of the world. He coaxes me like good poetry or memes from the internet. But just as conflicted and loving as ever. Do this but not like that or go over here and do this but not too much. Be quick but don’t hurry.
I think we’re all like this—a grab bag of contradictions and confusing sentiments that taken to their full logical conclusions don’t make any sense. But that’s okay—life doesn’t make any sense and I’m less sure year by year that anyone knows anything. I wish I’d feel confident that Tom figured out where to draw the line. How much to give each conflicting side but I don’t think he figured it out. He went back and forth—oscillating. But I think that’s all of us in life. We never fully figure it out—even towards the end.
Inside us we have these warring ideals that we try and make sense of outside of ourselves in our relationships and habits. And sometimes we get it right but often we get it wrong. We hurt people along the way and in brief moments fully love others and care for them how they need to be. Just like Tom. Love you grandpa.