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There is a concept in business and economics that is known
as opportunity cost. Simply put, opportunity cost is the very simple idea that
every choice I make for allocation of scare and limited resources is mutually
exclusive from every other allocation for those resources. Because this is
true; how we allocate our resources have an extended value beyond the simple
accounting cost (aka, the price on the tag). This becomes especially important
when you factor in the most precious scarce resource of all… time.
I have decided to write these words; because frankly, they
have plagued me long enough; I’ve simply carried this message in my heart for
long enough to know that the only way I can ever be free of this burden is to
face it head on and share it with all of you; who for some reason love and
support me despite the fact that I have done so very little to deserve said
love and support, but we’ll get into that soon enough. My objective in putting
these words to the digital page is to hopefully find some peace and some
understanding for myself; to face some harsh truths about myself, and hopefully
to find something somewhat resembling peace inside this all too noisy head of
mine lately.
I will be brutally honest with myself and you the reader. I
will speak of things that some of you reading were possibly involved in. Those
who’d rather not go down this particular rabbit hole with me; I completely
understand. There’s a lot to be said for burning the fucker down and never looking
back. That’s just never been me.
For those of you leaving here; I love you always. For those
of you coming with me… buckle up and hold on tight; because I have a bit of a
lead foot….
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It was a chilly and overcast Monday afternoon in 2001 when I
learned the concept of opportunity cost better than most. I had just gotten out
of my final class of the day and was on my way home to sit down and write a
term paper I hadn’t even started that was due the next day. That’s always been
my style; I need the pressure of a deadline to do my best work; but I digress.
I had no sooner turned on to I-275; the 4 mile stretch of road that connects
Downtown Knoxville where the University is to the sub urbs of North Knoxville
where I lived when my cell phone rang….
“Hey Dad, what’s up?”
The conversation was short and uneventful. He bitched about
work; I bitched about class. He said he had an airplane coming in a few hours
later to turn; I told him I had a paper to write. He probably bitched at me
when I told him it was due the next day and I hadn’t even started it. I
probably told him not to worry so much; we both know when the shit hits the
fan; I handle my business. The conversation wrapped up and he said the words to
me I’ll never forget…
“I’ll call you tomorrow.”
And with that, he was gone. All I saw looking back at me on
the long, slender Sanyo phone’s green and black LED display was the
date….Monday, February 19th, 2001.
The rest of the day was fairly uneventful. I wrote the
paper. I’m sure I was chatting on line with T because thanks to the advent of
the internet and Yahoo Instant Messenger; I was chatting online with T pretty
much every chance I got. T had been my best friend for years; but you see she lives
far away from me and well distance is a thing. We both wanted to explore more
for as long as I can remember, but it wasn’t until I started dating R the year
prior that T really was ready to take the plunge; because well. R lived even
further away from me than T did and I had to be the asshole to make it known
that long distance can kind of sort of work. However, at this point in our
lives both of us were free of the obligations that come with other people’s
feelings and we could explore what was there; and we were having a ball doing
exactly that. Things were progressing very nicely. I chatted with her, I wrote
my paper, and I went to bed. Just another day in paradise…
I awoke the next morning to a banging on my door. My bedroom
was the closer of the two to the front door but I am a very sound sleeper so it
took a while to get me to stir. When I woke up and heard the increasingly more
forceful knocks I immediately looked at my clock: 0530 (Got to love military
time).
When I got to the door I was half asleep; so I did what any
groggy 21 year old kid would do when a loud banging at his front door at an
ungodly hour by someone who could be Ed McMahon with a Publisher’s Clearing
House check or an ax-murdering psychopath would do. I whipped it wide open to
find neither. Instead it was my entire extended family; my aunt, my uncle, both
of my cousins.
“Hey guys, what’s up?” Forgetting about the time and place
and how out of the ordinary this visit was.
“Mikey, we need to talk” (to this day only blood relatives
and T are allowed to call me Mikey and live to tell the story) “Your dad had a heart
attack this morning and….he didn’t make it. He’s gone.”
“Okay; Does Maw-Maw
know? Does M know? Does T* (Dad also was dating a T at the time) know?” My
father trained me well. No way was a little thing like his death going to stop
this mission from firing. Maw-Maw is a southern name for grandmother; M was to
my dad what T is to me; the brass ring;
but she also was the executor of his estate so informing her was a two pronged
objective…she had work to do; and informing T* was just essential.
Brief Side Note: As more and more time has gone on; the
parallels between dad’s T* and my own are downright uncanny. They became best
friends during our two year tour on the Illinois side of the river just outside
St. Louis in a town called Belleville. At the time T* was married and raising
two small kids. Rumors flew; but I knew my dad; I knew the resentment he had
towards my mother for her not being afraid to wipe her ass with the promise to
love, honor and cherish, even if anything had happened, he’d immediately be
angry at himself and resent her forever. As such, it took 10 years of waiting
before they got together; but after almost a year of the best and healthiest
relationship of my dad’s life he had to go and die.
Opportunity Cost. I’ll call you tomorrow.
None of the three women had been told. I told Maw-Maw and M. My uncle S told
T*. Nothing I have ever had to do
physically or emotionally will ever compare with telling my grandmother that
she had lost her 2nd child. My grandmother had 5 children (one was
stillborn and was never named), the rest were 4 boys; of which my dad was the 2nd
oldest. I will go to my grave believing that the only thing harder than losing
a parent is losing a child.
I spent the rest of the morning handling what needed to be
handled. I picked out my father’s casket. I helped write his obituary. I told
who needed to be told. Then I grabbed lunch, and I went to class. I handed the
paper in on time. I went to my next class too. Then I went to work.
When I told T, when I told R, and when I told countless
other people of my father’s passing they all expressed the same sentiment: WHAT
IN THE BLUE FUCK ARE YOU DOING HERE?
To which I had pretty much the same response…
“Falling behind in my class work and starving to death isn’t
going to bring him back is it? He’s still going to be fucking dead!” I literally
heard those words in my head every single time I thought about stopping and
taking it in. I heard my dad say “I’m gone and I’m not coming back, nothing you
do now is going to change that; so keep doing what you are doing until I see
you again!” So I did what I do. I did not miss one class, I did not miss one
minute of work, my bought and paid for trip to see T went off without a hitch
(and is still one of the best weekends of my entire life HANDS DOWN); however,
there was one concern…. I didn’t shed a single tear until the day of the
funeral. Seriously, until I saw my dad’s lifeless corpse in the baby blue
casket; looking PERFECT in his Air Force Dress Blues, at which time I promptly
lost my shit.
I cried as hard and as loud as I have before and I am not
sure I have since. Everything I had been carrying with me for a week all came
back at me at once. I would later learn from a professor in my conflict
resolution class that this was called “Gunnysacking” and was about as unhealthy
a behavior as you can get mentally and emotionally; but in that moment, I did
what I had to do to execute the mission. Laying there in the casket; my dad was
on display for all to celebrate his life, mission accomplished, you can cry
now. And cry I did.
1. I will always place the mission first.
(To be continued)
