An Unremarkable Man

He wasn’t a banker or a politician or a scientist or anyone of any import, really. He was a simple man. He grew up the son of a farmer and became a farmer himself. He didn’t make it past the sixth grade, and although he could read, his spelling could best be described as fractured at best. The remarkable people — the bankers, the politicians, the scientists — would have called him dumb had they viewed him from afar as one studies a foreign species. He was an unremarkable man.

He met a woman and fathered seven children. When farming wasn’t sufficient to support the growing brood, he started driving trucks. He spent the next forty plus years earning his living on his ass. He followed the roads from the foothills of the Adirondacks to the mountains of Utah and everywhere in between in order to provide food and shelter for his family. Usually he made enough, sometimes he did not. This is the predicament of the unremarkable man.

While on the road, his wife grew lonely. To salve her loneliness, she began an affair with an even more unremarkable man. The man learned about the affair and lived with it constantly as he drove the truck over the long, lonely roads. Eventually, the wife left the unremarkable man for the even more unremarkable man and left the three youngest children, the ones who hadn’t become adults yet, behind with the unremarkable man.

The unremarkable man couldn’t change jobs to support the three kids, so he kept driving the big truck down the lonely roads. How many hours he drove the beast of a machine he couldn’t have told you. He could have told you that he saw the road more than his children. He missed many of the milestones other more remarkable men get to witness. To be sure, he was there when he could be, and never missed an occasion if he could help it. The problem with being an unremarkable man is that too often it can’t be helped.

As his age advanced and his career began winding down, he developed a pain in his neck. The unremarkable man went to a doctor — perhaps the most remarkable of men we have, and the doctor told him that if he didn’t stop smoking he was wasting the doctor’s time and, being a remarkable man, his time was too valuable to be wasted. The unremarkable man did what perhaps most unremarkable men do — he wrapped himself up in pride and ignored the doctor. He continued to ignore the doctor until the pain became too much to bear.

He sought the services of another doctor. This doctor ran tests developed by perhaps the most remarkable men, and the test revealed that he he had cancer. Cancer in his throat. The cancer would be cut out or he would die the doctor told him. If it was cut out, he would lose all of his voice box and would never again hear the sound of his voice but he would live. The unremarkable man still had two teenagers at home who needed to be cared for, so there was no question that he would get the surgery.

After the surgery, the unremarkable man continued his unremarkable life and raised his children with help from other family members. The scars healed and he became used to Donald Duck’s voice coming out of his mouth. He continued driving the roads and supported the teenagers until they made it to adulthood. He saw his children get married and have their own children. When he finally was able to leave the road behind professionally, he visited all of his children, who had dispersed all over the country as regularly as he could. Again he found himself driving the same old roads as had for most of his life, but it didn’t seem as lonely any more.

The unremarkable man lived a good and happy life until his old nemesis — cancer — showed up again. The unremarkable man was now too old and too weak to fight this enemy. So, he allowed cancer to take up permanent residence in his body. Soon, cancer had finished with him and he died. The process was longer than he would have liked and hurt more than he thought possible, but it finally did come to an end, as he was surrounded by his children. He drifted off peacefully wrapped in the love of his children, which muted the pain far more than he thought possible.

In the end, he was not a remarkable man. He was my father (and the most remarkable man I ever knew), and I love and miss him dearly.