Procrastination is a bitch. Or, we can spin it 180 degrees in the other direction and say ~ with an insouciant, Gallic shrug ~ it was just one of those things that had its pre-destined time, that the proverbial apple was simply yet not ready to hurl itself screamingly off its branch to certain suicide fifteen months ago, when we first began taking turns promising to take each other out for Birthday Coffees and ruefully watching as the dates approached and slipped away. So, tired of the unnecessary impasse and taking matters into my feet, I dealt destiny a mighty roundhouse blow to the stinking arse and finally, finally, treated a darling friend ~ the CrossFit Paramedic ~ yesterday for his. It was a meeting well-met, with quite a fair bit of excitement as we hadn't seen each other in pretty much forever, and there was indeed much to catch up on. (Translation: I had a terrible many questions I'd been saving up for him.)
During the course of conversation, including inquiring what he had specifically meant on a fb post about having just had his very first dreaded "boat dream" (he'd worked in the Navy for six years on a nuclear submarine), I then asked something I ask pretty much anyone who is often around ~ or has come close to ~ death: "Since you've started work as a paramedic, is there anything that has shifted inside of you? Like, has it changed your perspective on how you see life, yourself, or humanity?"
His answer was rich and full, though its content somewhat surprising; it turns out his pre-existing cynicism of humankind has only been fed to some extent by frequent abusers of the system, whereby many of his calls involve the same people with the same problems. "Most of them," he said with deflated somberness, "are what is often described as 'the scourge of society': the lifer crackheads, heroin and meth addicts. These same guys will regularly call 911 just to say they're severely intoxicated and need a ride to the treatment centre. I pretty much know most of them by name." Simultaneously, however, he found much comfort in a statistic he'd recently heard from a superior: Approximately 97% of the American population will never need to call 911. It's remarkable, and quite wonderful to know, in spite of all the possible reasons one can summon to explain the phenomenon.
I then moved onto another thing I'd been wondering: "When responding to a call and interacting with your patients, have you ever stopped, looked at someone properly and just found yourself kind of falling 'in love' with him or her, with the soul of that person, where you really felt a strong sense of connection or kinship?" At first, I was almost afraid he would recoil and think this a really weird question, but instead, his face alit with a very neat kind of joy. With sparkles fairly dancing in his eyes, he began to describe the very best and most unexpected part of his job: transporting seniors between nursing homes to other ports of call. It was all about their stories and spirits, wit and wisdom. One lady, he noted with a twinkle, was one of the first female boxers in the US and was still full of badass spunk: "Since she was like the only chick around, she fought guys all the time, and usually won. Man, she loved it. As soon as she mentioned she was a boxer, I looked down at my clipboard where I was supposed to be taking notes about her condition and whatnot, and chucked it on the dash and got into asking her as many questions as I could before we arrived. And that's how it's like with most of my seniors; transporting them is literally my very favourite part of the job."
Several of his seniors are military veterans like himself, including a fellow who was on one of first boats to land in Dieppe on D-Day; another was on a volunteer sand brigade during the Blitz in London. "He was describing how he'd hear the air sirens going off in the middle of the night and would slip into the clothes he had waiting to race off to work. The next afternoon, after being up all night and fighting the fires, he'd go back to the scene, and buildings that were there the day before were gone. Just gone. He lost family members, friends, acquaintances, people he saw at the café, all sorts of people, in bottom of the rubble of the buildings. They just... disappeared. Overnight. That, he said, was the absolute weirdest thing about it all. You just never knew what massive changes to your life and environment could happen just like that."
With this story, my mind slipped into one of its many pockets and I had sudden recall of one of the Blitzkrieg scenes in a favourite book, "The Shell Seekers," and relived specific visceral memories from the glorious cinematic adaptation of Atonement. The screams of firebombs and rat-tat-tats of rapid machine-gunfire segued seamlessly into the distinctive clacks of a typewriter potentially unleashing similar damage and I remembered a much more elegant, tender, and exquisitely lovely scene, a perfect fusion of operatic bliss and enthralling luminescence. The cinematography is a sheer masterpiece, each actor painted delicately and glowingly with gentle chiaroscuric sensitivities, plumes of cigarette smoke captured with soft, velvety ecstasy. This scene is the finest wine to be savoured slowly, rapturously, and of course, fully deserving of FS/TSS™*.
So, with the CP's stories, I was yet again reminded that sometimes you must unhesitatingly grab life and situations by the balls and say, "Hey! Time is short. Life is unpredictable. At any point, a sink hole can suddenly open up beneath one of our homes and swallow everything whole, or a massive chunk of fuselage can come screaming down from the heavens and take my bedroom out with me lying across my bed because I simply had to ignore Frank this one time, or you can get falsely accused of some heinous crime and find yourself locked in a British gaol until you do some weird deal and get shipped off to the French coast to fight as an alternate in some stupid war, only to end up succombing to sepsis from an unattended gunshot wound. Shit happens. So let's gather up our cojones, make a date, and hang out while we're still around. I want to spend some time with you because you matter, your stories and jokes, life and thoughts matter. Let's fuck procrastination up its silly ass and go partake of some caffeine."
And I'm so glad we finally did.
* Full-Screen/Turned-up Speaker Status
(photo credit: The wonderful image of the above fire brigade comes from an uncredited photographer but is part of the Archival Research Catalog (ARC) and maintained by National Archives and Records Administration. It is also included in Wikipedia's entry on the Battle of Britain, accompanied by this caption: "Over 500 firemen and members of the London Auxiliary Fire Fighting Services, including many women, combined in a war exercise over the ground covered by Greenwich (London) Fire Station. Ca. July 1939.")
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