Reaching Out

There was a guy in my law school who was an odd duck.  He started out in the class ahead of mine but graduated in my class.  I didn't know him well in law school, but I saw him two summers ago at another classmate's funeral.  I sat in an anteroom eating cheese and crackers while my friend chatted with other people, and this fellow sat down and started querying me.  He respected and admired me, he said.  He knew I was smart.  He knew I was working at a firm.  He wanted to know about it. 

He asked me a lot of questions about my job as a lawyer, and whether I thought it was an ethical profession, and what I thought my duty to the law was, to the profession.  He asked what it meant to walk in the path of the law.  This is why I call him an odd duck -- he never observed the niceties of small talk.  Well, I think he has some kind of diagnosable mental condition, too, although not an ominous one.  He has a restless energy that makes him twitch, and little patience or tact.  He was driven and incessant and penetrating and wanted to delve into philosophy, there in the anteroom of the small church where we were memorializing Stu.  I didn't know very well how to answer him.  Partly that was because I hadn't thought through the subjects, I was lazy, I was earning money and liked it and didn't want to dissect it.  Partly it was because his theories and hypotheses were over my head -- he would reference philosophers I hadn't read, or draw parallels to theology that, without a grounding in theology, I couldn't respond to. 

After the funeral he reached out to me.  I met him for coffee a time or two.  He shifted in his chair a lot.  He was intense, a coil of energy.  He told me about a book he was reading and suddenly, unexpectedly, reached across the table and held my hand, looking down and shifting in his chair.  He looked up at me, shyly.  It took me a minute to realize this was a romantic overture.  I smiled at him but took my hand away.  I had a boyfriend, I explained.  Would you, he asked, still be my friend?  I said I would.  I have a picnic table on my deck, he said.  You can see the trees in the park if you sit there. 

He was lonely.  Sometimes I thought he was a little bit crazy.  Sometimes I thought he was a genius.  In either case, his mind moved in a way I couldn't quite follow.  But he was committed to living deliberately, and ethically.  He thought through everything and wanted to push back on every comment I made, even the offhanded ones.  He got into long written debates with law professors across the country.  He wrote treatises and cc:'d me.  I didn't always read them.  I told him to relax, that sometimes you find answers when you aren't chasing them.  I told him that my approach was to look for beauty, and not to worry so much about truth.  I suggested he read Rumi.  In subsequent emails, he always mentioned Rumi.   I think he gave it careful study.   

I remember walking one day with him in the park.  I was guarded with him -- I didn't want to be too available to his loneliness, to become too much of a confidant.  We talked about law and about the military.  He was a reservist, and he took it seriously.  He took everything he did seriously.  He picked up litter as we walked.  He saw moral duties everywhere.  He was wiry tough and fragile at the same time.  His restless mind was seeking softness, I think.  Part of me wanted to help him find it, to sit in the dappled shade beside him, talking of poetry, watching children, letting him relax.  But part of me was afraid that if I did that I would open the door to a need that I wasn't prepared to fill.  I had a full life already. 

So as these things do, our correspondence lapsed.  My fault.  He found me again just before he went to Iraq.  He was pondering desertion, or suicide, because he didn't believe in the war.  He didn't think it was legal.  And yet he is a man who honors commitments.  He had lots to write about.  But after a short back and forth it lapsed again.  I heard from him once when he was in Iraq, but it's been a while. 

He was in the blast in Mosul, I learned this morning.  He's alive, I see, and talking, with shrapnel in his belly and chest.  I'm sure he's thinking hard, even now, about doing the right thing.  He always is.  He's a tough guy.  I hope he's tough enough to get home.  If he does, I expect he won't be sure that's where he should be. 

I feel helpless, and selfish, and sad.  I thought about this morning's guest post on Notes from the Legal Underground.  I thought about yesterday's lovely birthday, how connected and accepted and loved I feel, even though I'm lazy and selfish and broken.  I thought about posts I've been drafting in my head about regret and about resolutions. 

This is both a regret and a resolution.  Reach out.  And respond, when someone reaches out.  And when it's scary, reach out anyway, and respond anyway.  We need each other.  I wish I had done better responding to this fellow, my friend.  I will do better. 

Comments

[Terrance]

Wow. What a heartfelt post. Thanks for sharing it. I'm glad to hear your friend survivied the blast in Mosul. I hope he makes it home alright.

[Jim]

Thank you for writing that.

[ms]

Thanks for sharing this beautiful, delicately written post. I will send good thoughts to your friend in Iraq and also heed the lesson here....

[wab]

Your post was deeply moving; thank you for sharing your regrets and your inspiration. Best wishes and prayers for your wounded friend

[Richard Ames]

Well written. You're going to dislike this comparison for politcal reasons perhaps, but this piece reads like a Peggy Noonan article. I mean the style. Have you ever read her non-political writings? Short deliberate sentences carefully placed and packed with emotional energy. I like it. I enjoyed reading it. Thanks.

[Stephen]

Wow! This is touching! All the best to your friend in Iraq. We pray he will come home safe.