Rick

February 1, 2018

The last time I saw Rick, it was before Christmas. He was sitting in his wheelchair as always, with a smile on his deeply lined face. Since his stroke three years ago, he hasn’t been able to talk, and his entire right side hangs useless. Yet, he smiles. I first got to know RIck when he and his crew put the roof on the new church. Angel Roofing—I guess it fit for the job, and although he was no angel, he loved angels, and we got along well. It was hard not to like him, except for when he drank too much. That, and his smoking was what landed him in the hospital for heart surgery, and it was during the surgery that he had the stroke. He had grown up hard, with an abusive father, so the bad life choices he made are not surprising. What was surprising is that he never seemed bitter about it. Instead, he drank.

Rick put the roof on our Cassadaga house. I didn’t think we could afford to do the whole thing, and he didn’t want to do just half of it. “You can pay me half down, and I’ll carry the rest of it,” he told me. I wasn’t about to let him bear the weight of indebtedness, and so I waffled. “God will take care of you,” he said. He was right. He did the whole roof, and the money was there when the job was done. The roofer had schooled the preacher in faith. Go figure.

Rick’s crew was always a motley assortment of extended family; young men who were usually more brawn than brain. If he left them to work on a job while he scouted up more work, as often as not, he’d have to tear off what they had done and redo it. He had a soft spot for people down and out, I suppose because he himself had spent plenty of time there. A more generous hearted person I don’t think I’ve ever met. We drank lots of coffee at his place or mine, laughed, and sometimes cried together. He began coming to church, and was doing well for awhile, until the thirst got to him again and his life began to unravel. And then, the stroke. 

I had been stopping by to see him most every week until things got busy around Christmas. But the other night I had a dream about him; it had happened once before—a dream that he was talking again. This time, he was driving a specially-equipped wheelchair van, and when he got out, he was talking, but not as well as in my previous dream. I knew it was time to go see him again.

After a stop at Tim Horton’s for coffee and donuts, I stopped by his place. He lives in an apartment building and has round the clock care. His aide rang me in, and as I opened the door, he was sitting as usual in his wheelchair, smiling. He’s let his hair grow long, and sports a beard, neither of which he had when he was working. I sat down, opened the bag of donuts, took the lid off the coffee, and talked; first an apology, then whatever I could think of. It’s hard when it is all one way, but we’ve been friends for a long time, and now, in his need, is not the time to abandon him. He motioned for my hand, and it was time to pray and be on my way. Next week, I’ll go again, and the week after that, grateful that Rick doesn’t hold a grudge, and that my failure in friendship is forgiven as we drink our coffee and remember better times.