Playing Fair and Being Kind

The proof is in the pudding. Point out something that is being done today that is part of a plan. Let me know when you are ready to talk (or point). I contend that life is a journey from mistake to mistake. Can you imagine if it was a journey from success to success? (Cue laughter here.) I’m not here to discuss life as we wish it but I have been thinking about a few experiences of mine that defy explanation. I’ll talk a little about them here.

My father, Louis Goodwin, shot himself in the left temple at the age of 59 when I was away from home in the Navy. I was a new sailor stationed in Great Lakes, Illinois, enlisted for about five months. It was February 1958. My father had been commenting on his shitty life for about ten years. He was suffering COPD, a double hernia for much of his adult life, and generally a bad attitude from being semi-invalid when he should have been robust and filled with desire. He obtained the double hernia from trying to lift a meat wagon out of a snow bank in Waterville, Maine while he was working for the Armour Meat Company. He was probably in his early twenties. Not much more. Reportedly he was a Colby student. Dad was driving the wagon, pulled by a horse. The rig got sideways on the road and slid into deep snow. The horse was unable to pull the wagon free. Dad got behind and tried helping by lifting and pushing. He pulled the double hernia at that time.

My father, Louis Goodwin at left York High School Maine; Right Colby College.

My dad smoked a package of Camel cigarettes every day for years. Of course no one knew the dangers of smoking. He later contracted TB while working in a shipyard during WW II. These maladies landed him in hospitals and islolation wards on a regular basis. He found it laborious to breath and could not find meaningful work. I remember him as a testy person. My older siblings knew him when he was in better condition and when he was a very loving father. During my childhood his homestays became longer and longer. I remember that he workded at clerical jobs thereafter but often had to quit work or take a lay-off period due to his conditions of fatigue. No wonder he was short tempered.

The final ten years he kept a revolver in his bedroom for the reason of shooting himself. He made this known to the family. His only comment was that when the time came that he was unable to take himself to the bathroom he was going to end his life. Over time the subject was nearly forgotten. He continued to wheeze and cough and growl. Many times he would relate that while he was in our large backyard his heart had stopped. As he told it only by stopping and leaning on a fencepost did he finally be able to breath again and feel his heart beat again. In retrospect I am convinced that is exactly what was happening to him. He was a very ill man and he did what he could to be of help around the house.

By the age of 15 I was his right-hand man. All my siblings were gone from the nest and my mother was working full time or on the road. She was a musician and she made good money playing cocktail lounges and summer fairs up and down the East Coast. My dad and I remained home and did yard work and house work together for three or more years. That is until I joined the Navy. Five months later he shot himself. That he did was not unexpected but at the same time it was shocking.

I found out about it in an odd fashion. I was with three Navy buddies on a weekend liberty in Chicago. We were walking along Lake Michigan on Saturday and we had one more day before we needed to be back at the base. While walking along I had a sudden feeling of dread. I lost focus of what we were doing and came to a dead stop on the sidewalk. The other three looked over their shoulders to see me stopped, staring at the ground with my hand to my head. “C’mon, Goody”, they called. Slowly I caught up to them and told them I felt horrible and I had to get back to the base. Something was terribly wrong and I needed to get back. They wouldn’t have any of it. After a few minutes of discussion I shook the feeling, mostly, and re-joined them. The feeling lingered but not enough to be concerned.

When we returned to the base on Sunday early evening there was message for me to see the base chaplain. I walked over to his office and had an inkling that my father was probably ill or worse. I knocked on the office door of the chaplain and entered when I heard his voice call out. He was sitting at his desk in a large well appointed office. I was impressed how beautiful the space was.
“My father died didn’t he”, I said. The thought just popped into my head at this last moment.
“Yes. Were you expecting this?”, he answered.
“No. I just guessed it.”
We chatted a bit and he told me he had a voucher for a train ticket to Boston. I took it and left to pack a sea bag and go.

When I arrived home I was in the house for a day before I was told how Dad had died. I was devastated, for many reasons but I was mostly shocked to hear that he had shot himself at the time that I was walking with my friends by Lake Michigan. I must have been somehow connected to my dad when he died. All these years I have been puzzled and intrigued by this incident. I don’t have an answer. I’m certain there was a deep space and time connection at the istant he pulled the trigger and I felt the immense sorrow from it all.

I’ll leave it here. I have nothing more to say about it.

Instance number two.
My mother, Velma Goodwin, died violently as a victim of a triple homicide in her home in 1985. It was August 10th. Some guy had been invited to do yardwork by one of the victims. An older man, George Harvender, who normally did all of the yardwork was being a friend to this much younger man he’d met at a local bar near the house in Boston. The younger man and George argued in the cellar of the house about the task and it became violent. The younger man hit George with a hammer and knocked his brains out. George was alive but not much. My mother heard the ruckus and called down from the first floor. The perpetrator went up the stairs and cornered my mother in the kitchen and killed her with the same hammer. Another resident in the house, Harriet Cady, came down the stairs from the second floor and found the scene in the kitchen whereupon the perpetrator, by this time finding a large kitchen knife, stabbed her multiple time and she died from the wounds immediately. This all took about ten minutes.

The perpetrator then searched the house for valuable items and left. He went to the nearby police station and turned himself in. The police went with him to find the house and the scene of the murders. The perpetrator was confused and disoriented to the point that he could not find the house and the police eventually released him thinking he was crazed and hallucinating.

After the crime was discovered a day later the police remembered the man and his visit to them and the futile search for the house. They had his name and address but by now he was on the lam. His family knew of his whereabouts and eventually he was convinced to return and to give himself up. The newpapers and the on-air media got pictures of his face and it was front page news. I saw the perpetrator’s mugshot on the t.v. I recognized his face but I couldn’t place where I’d seen him. During this period of my life I was working in the substance abuse counseling field so I knew many recovering addicts and alcoholics. I searched and called several friends in the field to help to recall the man.

Eventually I found out his identity and it came to me where I knew him from. Several years before the murders I was attending AA meetings in Boston on a regular basis. I was at a downtown meeting one night and there this man standing at the podium sharing his story. I listened to him and felt an odd sense of dread during his talk. I didn’t know what to think about the feeling I was sensing. It was frightening and ominous. I recall looking at the man and thinking how threatened I felt by his voice. I left the meeting and never gave it another thought until that day I saw his face on the t.v. years later. I wonder if this was another case of time and space compression. If there was no time and space and I was witnessing an event that was happening or had happened in the moment. I’m not sure and I don’t know how to find out. Again, all I can do is wonder about it and accept that there are many things that are unknown to me that I will never know about.

That was case number two. There is a third case but I will save it for another telling. It is more of an epiphany than these first two. A different category of discovery.

I hope your day is as beautiful as this day in Maine. I think I’ll drag the lawn mower out and get at the tall grass in the yard. I should get up and move around a bit and this might be the solution.
Peace out,
G. M. Goodwin
August 21, 2018