May 28, 2012

• Delayed

       Some of you know I'm training drivers these days.   With the brand new rookies, I have to plan my day well, because I have to stay on duty even after they start driving, so if I bring them out of the sleeper too soon, we can end up stuck out on the road for ten hours in order to remain compliant with the hours of service laws.  You know, the best laid plans...  I was with a brand new guy and making good time last Saturday, when I counted our remaining product and found out I had a whole stack of dough balls that should already have been delivered. (That's over 200 lbs. of dough.) I went back through my paperwork, found my error and we had to backtrack from Luray, VA across the mountain to New Market and down to Harrisonburg to deliver the dough.  It was about 35 minutes each way, and I had only left a cushion of about an hour. After we got back on track, delivered our last stop and picked up empty trays in Stephens City, it was apparent we'd be a few minutes short of the time we needed to get back, so I had him park at the last place I knew would have truck parking.  It's a little diner with a big parking lot in Rippon, WV about halfway between Winchester, Va and Harpers Ferry, WV on route 340.  We had 10 hours to kill, so we bunked down for the night, I in the top bunk and he below and were asleep (or at least I was) as soon as our heads hit the pillows. 

       About 6 hours later I woke and with so much time to kill, even though I was well rested, I rolled over and went back to sleep.  As soon as the sun came up, though, it was a different story.  The temperature inside the cab must have risen 15 degrees in a half hour, so with 2 hours 'til we could drive off, I woke up my partner and we headed into the Rainbow Diner.  This is one of my favorite stop-offs.  It's a tiny old place and the walls and ceiling are plastered with stickers of trucking companies and related businesses.  The food is plain but cheap and good.  I ordered eggs over medium with bacon, hash browns (cooked in real bacon cracklins) and toast, and my partner ordered his food.

       Looking out the window into a field of foot high, new corn, I saw something out of place, and momentarily it moved toward us...a mother and baby groundhog.  Something I had never seen. I pointed it out to my partner and we watched them for another few minutes 'til they ran into a brush pile and disappeared.  Not a minute later, the front door opened, and in walked a lady carrying a vase with two carnations, followed closely by a thin man in a US Navy veteran hat and a trucking company shirt.  "That's weird," I thought, but she immediately explained to the waitress (who she obviously knew), "Our anniversary was two days ago, but it was a bad day, so we're celebrating it today."  It struck me as odd, but when they sat at the table behind me, it didn't take long before I understood.   He was talking lucidly, but about events which were current several years ago.  It was an instant flashback to the long battle my aunt had with Alzheimers before she died.  To the unitiated, the conversation would have sounded perfectly normal if just a bit out of time.  To someone who has been close to a person suffering from this disease,  (we visited my great aunt several times a week in the nursing home down the block after she could no longer live on her own, even with her sister [my grandmother] in the house) the hints were unmistakable.  I sat listening to his accounting of new laws affecting truckers and the equipment they drive.  Laws which went into effect 10 years ago, but which he spoke of as recent.  His wife hung on his every word and responded when he paused, as if it were the first time she had ever heard the conversation.  It was all I could do to keep dry eyes.  Here was love.  True love in spite of the worst possible interpretation of  "for worse".  This man (I can only assume) is losing his memory and knows it.  His wife is powerless to do anything but be there and care for him as she watches his life fade away like steam rising from a pot of boiling water.  First there was a man, obviously capable and attractive to her.  She married him and they raised their children.  Then he began to forget little things, and then more and more.  The memories turn to vapor and he can, if he concentrates bring them back into focus, but more and more silently slip away while he watches, knowing there's only a certain amount of water in the pot and it's quickly disappearing.  She sees her man losing his manliness and becoming again a child.  It is an awful and emotionally wrenching process which has haunted her every waking moment for four or five years if my guess is correct, and yet she waits for a day when he is not combative, when there are enough memories for him to appear normal enough to go out and celebrate an anniversary he may or may not recall. 

      We finished our breakfast. I paid, since my inattention had cost my partner an extra 10 hours away from home.  I walked out to the truck, shaken.  Death had walked in with the couple who sat less than a foot from my shoulder.  He had a firm grip and was patiently waiting out the horrible course of the man's disease.  In the midst of the ugliness of his interminable trip to the grave sat a woman who had decided that for better or for worse, this was her man and she was going to be there with him 'til the end.  This Sunday morning, I was witness to greatness. 

   

  • 9:35 pm
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