Long Overdue

While I’ve not posted for months, it wasn’t because you weren’t in my thoughts. To the contrary. If you’re reading this now, rest assured, there’s a good chance that over the course of this long and particularly hot summer I’ve thought about you – and done so on more than one occasion.

But rather than post about me or some dusty old memory, I decided this morning to post about someone close to me – in fact, and for reasons I’ll soon detail, the one person who may just be as close to me than any in the world.  And he’s a guy to whom I owe so much that, no matter more years I have left, I will never be able to fully repay him.

His name is Chris – Chris Bittel, to be exact.  And, truth be told, not all that long ago I didn’t even know who he was  But about ten years ago he came into my life like a gift from above, and over the course of the past decade or so he’s managed to keep me clean, engaged, connected with the world outside, and, in no small way, sane.

To that outside world, I suppose, he’s just another one of the countless/nameless aides, assistants, or full-time “nurses” who, day after day, shift after shift, and hour after hour, are with me full-time, doing things as big as making sure I’m still breathing and as small as scratching some nagging itch I have or pushing my eyeglasses up my nose.

You don’t need much imagination to visualize all the other distasteful yet compassionate things that fall between those two responsibilities; things these full-time attendants are compelled to do on my behalf and things that, frankly, my sense of decorum, pride and self-respect precludes me from even mentioning for fear it will create a mental image you’ll never shake.

That said, of all these “aides” who’ve paraded in and out of my life these dozen years, a stretch of time during which fate saw fit to systematically rob me of the use of my upper body, there remains to this day only one Chris Bittel.

And make no mistake, Chris is not just some guy with nothing to do with his time but take care of some broken down has-been, a basketball-loving, wheelchair-bound cripple.  Chris is a young man with a rich, full, and busy life.  A husband to Katie and a father to Harper (one of the most precocious and darling little girls you’d ever want to meet) he somehow continues to do the impossible; he manages to make all three of us feel as though we’re the center of his universe.

And as a career observer/studier of people – not to mention a long-time sausage-making political operative – I know first hand the difference between an act and the real deal.

And, indeed, when it comes to the real deal, Chris Bittel is all that and a bag of donuts.

For the past decade he and I have traveled far and wide, from coast to coast, in our mutual pursuit of all things Orange.  In that time, we’ve been bonded predominantly by two things; his loyalty to me, and his deep love of SU sports – an abiding passion that, as many of you know, has fueled me for years.

I’ll admit that, as a thirty-something year old from nearby Lyncourt, I only know enough about Chris’ life and background to be dangerous.  Little more than that, however.

He, on the other hand, has learned so much about me over time that – especially when someone asks about me or something I might have done with my life – I often find myself simply turning to him and asking him to answer for me.

You see, of all Chris’ remarkable talents, right near the top is his uncanny ability to just listen.

In a world full of talkers, pontificators, and, let’s be honest, gasbags, he’s one of the only people I know who not just listens to just about everything, but somehow manages to absorb it. In fact, while so many in this world – especially men – remain utterly awash in useless information, mountains of empty data, and boxcars full of meandering and overlong anecdotes, Chris is a sponge.

I kid you not. The guy absorbs and retains as much as any man I’ve ever known.

Plus, over the years he’s become my steady presence – not to mention, my best buddy, my sounding board, my chauffeur, my travel companion, my dinner date, my occasional drinking buddy, my personal groomer/wetnurse, and perhaps above all, my emotional crutch.

You see, it’s not easy being me – and it’s getting harder all the time.  Hell, you know that, even without ever having experienced it.  And being 75 is incredibly demanding under the best of circumstances – even if you’re able bodied.  But being 75 years old and confined to a wheelchair, and without the use of either your arms or your legs?

That, my friends, is a whole new ballgame.

For that reason, these days I’ve found myself given, more and more, to protracted bouts of depression and despair.  Thinking – which had truly always been one of my greatest strengths – has somehow become one of my greatest vulnerabilities.  To that end, I’ve taken to seeing a therapist to help me talk through so many of the troubling things I continue to think and feel.

And it’s not just that Chris drives me to those appointments, and then wheels me in and out of my therapist’s office, sitting there patiently the whole time while I attempt to unburden my soul.  It’s that on those days when I don’t have an appointment and yet still need someone with whom I can share whatever anxiety I might be feeling, it’s Chris – God love him – who bravely steps up to the plate and tries to do what he can to help.

Ours is not a perfect relationship. Far from it, in fact. Like any two strong-willed men, we occasionally disagree, we sometimes fight, and every once in a while, one of us will be insensitive or hurt the other, often unwittingly.

But, like all great and meaningful friendships, the deep-rooted and rarely spoken bond between us abides.

That’s why I suppose I’m writing this.  To tell all my friends and family that, for every time you might spot a bearded, brown-eyed and often baseball cap-wearing young man with me at SU games or in public, and for those time when you might catch glimpses of him helping me navigate the ins and outs of daily life, it’s the things you can’t see – the things inside him, inside us – that I’m most grateful for.

And I’m writing this as well to thank for Katie and Harper for sharing their best friend and daddy for as long as they have.  Try as I may, I’ll never be able to tell either of them just how much I appreciate it, or how much their generosity has meant to me.

Nor will I ever be able to tell that special man in their life – hell, that empathetic, patient and remarkably kind Rock of Gibraltar in all our lives – just how much he continues to mean to me, or how much I love him and that big, stupid, bottomless heart of his.  ***