Bruce Meeting

As we shook hands warmly, I surprised myself by reaching out and squeezing his forearm with my left hand. Suddenly, I was overcome with emotion. I leaned into him and I said in in a voice slightly north of a whisper, “When I was about 13 or 14-years-old, you saved my life. I thank you for that.”

I hadn’t planned on saying it.

I wasn’t sure I could or would be able to say anything.

I was immediately a bit embarrassed that I had made my confession in front of my wife of 29 years, and our new friend who had made this introduction.

Afterall, I was 58 years old at the time of our brief encounter, and I had been dreaming about this moment for close to fifty of them. Literally, in my dreams, I had seen this play out time and time again.

His response was barely a word; a head nod laced with well-practiced humility. A gravely utterance came from his well-used vocal chords. This was a man who had heard these words before, of that, I am certain. Countless, countless times.

I had so much emotion, layers upon layers of emotion. And memories, memories of a life in which I had never met this aging man, yet he was as much a factor in the man that was touching him as my own family. Maybe even my own father. In a way, he was the man who saved me from my own father.

If I have learned anything in my own struggle of growth and age, it is that opening myself up, as I have gone from boy, to man, to man on the back half of it all, has, of course, caused aches and pains, but, it has also paid me great dividends. Sure, I have tried to steer my life, but in many ways, I have let my life steer me.

I have reinvented too many times to count. Sometimes running to things, and, sometimes from them.

People call me a coward, a bully, a visionary, a renaissance man, an asshole, a drunk, a brother, a mentor.

This encounter, with this man, who is so desperately important to me and who I am, the fact I embody all of the aforementioned labels, along with my wife, has been the most consistently consistent presence