Vol. 2 may be published this month—if I can make my goal.
Well, August was another strange month, as I continued to recover from the two freak household accidents I had in July. While my output was certainly affected, I wasn’t shut down from some progress. Here’s how I did relative to my goals.
Blog twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays. Did this. I had lots to write about.
I’m not making a goal of attending any writers meetings, partly from not knowing how my surgery and illnesses will lay me up, and partly because one meeting may be cancelled due to lack of a venue. I went to one meeting.
Complete two editorial passes through A Walk Through Holy Week, Vol 2. I managed to do this. Actually, I made three editorial passes through and have declared it “Done”. Publishing tasks to follow.
Figure out any final changes to the latest Danny Tompkins story, then finish and publish it. Did this, and published the short story on Aug 5. Made changes to it over the next few days.
Complete the commentary between letters. If I can get that done, begin selection of photos and insert them in the book. Did this. Completed commentary, Introduction, proofreading the letters and commentary, and started selecting photos.
And, one more for good measure: Make a start at outlining Vol 3 of A Walk Through Holy Week.Nope, did not work on this at all.
Hopefully, I’ll come very close to finishing my next book of expatriate year letters this month.
September will be an odd month. My heart surgery will be on Sept 30, and I have lots of pre-op stuff before that. So I don’t plan on any writing this month. Publishing tasks will take precedence.
Blog twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays.
Attend three writing group meetings. I present at the one on Sept 10.
Complete publishing tasks for A Walk Through Holy Week, Vol. 2 and publish it to Amazon. I may have to do so with a temporary cover.
Complete adding photos to the Saudi years letters book. A really stretching-it goal would be to do enough formatting to order a review copy.
Spend at least a little time organizing Vol. 3 of A Walk Through Holy Week.
That’s it, and it may be more than I can accomplish. But it’s better to have a goal that requires you to work hard and efficiently.
I had one more Danny Tompkins story to tell. Will this be the last.
My last post told about the latest of my Danny Tompkins stories. But I’m not sure I ever did a post explaining the full series and what my goals are for it. I think, with posting story #7, the series is done. But I thought that after #6, and years later I got the idea for the new story. So I guess I should say maybe it’s done, or maybe it isn’t.
The first story in the series is “Mom’s Letter”. I wrote this back around 2006. A fellow writer told me about a short story writing contest and encouraged me to enter. The word limit was rather short. My critique partners said the story wasn’t well enough developed, and I didn’t submit it. Later, when not governed by a specific word count, I expanded the story. Critique partners now liked it, and I waited for an opportunity to do something with it.
“Mom’s Letter” started it all.
Then came the beginning of 2011. That’s when I made the decision to self-publish. What to self-publish first? I had a history book almost done, but not quite. I still had a couple of months to go before it would be ready. But I remembered I had “Mom’s Letter” ready to go. And so I published it on Feb 13, 2011.
“Mom’s Letter” tells the story of Danny Tompkins, a 13-year-old boy who, on the last day of his first year at scout camp, learns that his mother has entered the hospital for the last time. Danny has the drive home from camp to ponder what life will be like without Mom. The story then fast forwards to the future, the Daniel, the adult Danny has become, finds a letter his mom wrote him during that week at camp, and remembers what it was like in those days.
This story took mw much further into the Danny Tompkins world that I expected to go.
That was all I figured on doing with Danny. But, as my writing continued, I realized I could make a series out of that, with the goal being to help teens who have experienced a loss to recover from the loss. And as I thought about it, the stories started rolling. “Too Old To Play” covered the wake and funeral. “Kicking Stones” was about going back to school. “Saturday Haircuts, Tuesday Funeral” told the story of how his dad dealt with his grief and that of his children. “What Kept Her Alive” told the story of his mother’s illness and suffering. And “Growing Up Too Fast” covered the struggles Danny had navigating his teen years.
The specific circumstances of Danny’s life meant he missed a lot of the typical stuff a teenager goes through.
As I say, I thought that the series was done at that point. I figured I had covered about all the things that a teen had to deal with. I hoped also that the memories of the adult Daniel showing how he got through the times would help a teen is similar situations. What more would I have to talk about?
If you read my last post, you know how “To Laugh Again” covered the return to normal after the period of mourning. That story came to me quite a while after I completed the rest of stories.
So, that’s where the series is. You can get an idea of it at this link. I hope some of you will take a look at it.
I had one more Danny Tompkins story to tell. Will this be the last.
Some time ago, such as in July 2018, the idea came to me for another story in the Danny Tompkins short story series. At least that’s the earliest I have about it on paper. I thought I was done with the series at six stories and then cobbling them together into a short book.
But the idea sat there from mid-2018 until November 2023. Having just finished two fairly major writing projects, I looked for something to fill in a couple of weeks until I was ready to start the next. This came to mind, so I hog-tied it and whipped it out in a week or so, either November or December 2023.
In January I ran the first few pages past my writing critique group, the Scribblers & Scribes. It was obvious from that that the story wasn’t working, wasn’t as clear as I wanted it to be. At another meeting I ran a few more pages by them with the same results. In between other writing, I pulled this story out a few times and made some fairly major changes. I sent it out to the critique group via e-mail and received some comments in return. It seemed that I had the right structure as the comments I received were about smaller things, such as better wording here and a little more detail there.
Last week, while waiting on my Bible study project to simmer a little, I brought Danny’s latest story out and made those final polishes based on comments or what seemed best to me. On Sunday last, I declared it done, or as done as I could make it. Here’s a link to it on Amazon.
I had some trouble writing the book description for the listing on Amazon. Here’s what I came up with.
Daniel Tompkins received word that his sister died, which triggers memories of a day, more than fifty years before, after his mother’s death. He faced a dilemma back then, a dilemma that stressed him out. The memory of what he went through as a 13-year-old helped him deal with his grief now.
So on Monday, after a routine dentist appointment, I got to work on publishing tasks. It all went surprisingly well, including making a simple cover, one that fits in with the rest of the series. Less than three hours after I uploaded it, it went live.
After that, I received some last minute critiques from my critique group (but I had sent it out to them kind of last minute), I made some edits—twice—and uploaded a revised version three times, the last time Wednesday evening. I received one even later critique that I started going through last night. I don’t know yet whether this will result in one last round of edits.
It feels good to get this done and published. I just wish I had better artistic skills and could make a better cover.
This was a strange month. I expected to undergo open-heart surgery on July 22, but it was postponed when I injured my leg. Still waiting on that to heal so the surgery can be rescheduled. But the leg injury has hurt my movements and kept me from working at my writing as much as I’d hoped. Nevertheless, I did have accomplishments.
Blog twice a week on Mondays and Fridays. Got this done, with the help of scheduled posts.
Make as much progress as possible on Volume 2 of A Walk Through Holy Week. It would be nice to have the first draft done before July 22. Completed the first draft on July 27!
Attend one writing group meeting. The two other meetings are cancelled due to venue problems during the summer. Did this. The other two meetings stayed cancelled
Complete the Introduction and occasional commentary of the Saudi letters book. I got the Introduction done in the last few days. The commentary is started but not yet done.
Possibly complete and publish a short story I’ve been working on, the next in the Danny Tompkins series. I worked on this some more, so that it’s more or less done. Some comments from my critique group are not yet fully addressed.
Setting goals going forward is difficult, because I don’t know how my healing will go—not only with my leg but with a new shoulder/arm injury. I might have heart surgery late in the month, or, more likely, it will slip into September. So how do I plan for writing tasks with such uncertainty?
Blog twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays. I may use scheduled posts again.
I’m not making a goal of attending any writers meetings, partly from not knowing how my surgery and illnesses will lay me up, and partly because one meeting may be cancelled due to lack of a venue.
Complete two editorial passes through A Walk Through Holy Week, Vol 2. I should be able to get this done even with uncertainty of schedule.
Figure out any final changes to the latest Danny Tompkins story, then finish and publish it.
Complete the commentary between letters. If I can get that done, begin selection of photos and insert them in the book.
And, one more for good measure: Make a start at outlining Vol 3 of A Walk Through Holy Week.
That’s enough. I’ll be lucky to get this much done.
If you’ve been reading my last few posts, you know I’ve been hesitant to set goals for 2024. My problem is having too many projects in different stages to work on all of them. So I laid out all the projects I’d like to work on if I had infinite time. This is just projects that have taken up some of my brain power in the last two years, not things that are in my writing ideas folder, actually folders, both paper and computer folders.
I’m still not sure of this, but I need to set goals. So here they are. I’m dividing them into two sections: Realistic Goals, and Wouldn’t-It-Be-Wonderful Goals.
Realistic Goals
Finish editing A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 1 and publish it. I’m targeting the end of January for completing this.
Pull Documenting America: Run-Up To Revolution from Kindle Vella, and publish it as a print book and e-book. This will not be a large project. I’m targeting February for completing this.
Write A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 8, simultaneously with teaching it. That should be February through April. Publishing will be delayed until the rest of the series is published.
Write A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 2 and publish it. This, I hope, is a four-month project, or maybe a little more. This should be a fairly easy project to complete, because I’ve thought much about it and done a fair amount of planning.
Get to work on A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 3. I’d like to say “and finish and publish it,” but I’m not yet sure if my other projects will be completed on schedule.
Make final edits to my short story, “To Laugh Again”, and publish it. I suspect this will happen in odd moments during other projects. This should be in the first half of the year.
Write and publish the next book in the Documenting America series. I hope to decide what the subject of the book will be by the end of March, and to write the book the second half of the year.
Begin transcribing the letters from our years in Saudi Arabia. I’m hoping to start this in February, though more realistic is in the second half of the year. Part of the problem is I don’t really know how many letters there are, so I don’t know how big the project is. That’s why I can’t plan on when I will finish it.
So those are the Realistic Goals. Now for the Wouldn’t-It-Be-Wonderful Goals.
Update The Candy Store Generation for the last several election cycles, and re-publish. I’d like to do this by July.
Work on the John Cheney book. By the end of2024, I’d like to have the full structure of the book known, and several chapters written. If I do work on this, it will be in odd moments, multi-tasking while watching TV. I have no goal for when to publish it.
Work on the Thomas Carlyle bibliography. As with the John Cheney book, this is for off hours, multi-tasking. Again, I have no goal regarding publishing.
Work on One Of My Wishes, a new poetry book. Since at present I have no inspiration for writing new poetry, I’m not sure if this will ever happen.
Outline the next book in my Church History Novels series. I won’t say any more about that right now.
So that’s it. Lots of plans, lots of hopes, lots of effort and efficiency needed to come close to all of this.
Ah, the first of the month comes on a regular blogging day. Perfect time to address progress and set some goals. First, the November progress.
As always, blog twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays. I missed one day, Friday of Thanksgiving week. Otherwise, I had a meaningful blog post on each scheduled day.
Attend three writers group meetings. I managed to do this. Thought I was going to miss one, but was able to make all three.
Finish editing Documenting America: Run-Up To Revolution, and schedule all chapters to publish to Kindle Vella. Yes! I got this done. All are published to Kindle Vella, no one is spending any money to read them. Alas.
Finish the first draft of A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 1. This will be a stretch, but I should get close. No, did not quite get this done. As of yesterday’s writing, I still have a little over two chapters to go. I lost more than a week over Thanksgiving. Before that, I had a hard time with some of the writing, often missing my daily goal, occasionally having to spend the day in study and write nothing. But that’s okay; it was still progress in small steps.
Get a little more done on the ideas for The Artwork of God. I’m still in the research stage on this project. Ideas continue to come, so I guess I met this goal. I didn’t put much on paper, however, just brainstorming it. Found a couple of good quotes to go in it. So the goal was met, but just barely.
Begin writing down some plot ideas for the next volume in The Forest Throne series. My granddaughter and I sat and talked about this one day while she was here. I told her my ideas and she gave me feedback as well as some of her ideas. Since the book will be about the girl in the Wagner family, I will really need her help.
Now, what about goals for December? It’s the time I’ll have to try to get much done to meet my goals for the year. I haven’t looked at those for a long time. But, without looking back, here’s what I hope to accomplish this month.
Blog twice a week, on Monday and Friday.
Attend three writers meetings. I’m not sure the third one will be held, as it will be getting close to Christmas.
Finish the first draft and much of the editing of A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 1: To Jerusalem. As I said above, I’m down to the last couple of chapters. If I can maintain my writing schedule, I should finish the writing by December 10. That gives me two weeks to edit, enough time to go through the whole thing.
Type up some of the ideas for book 3 in The Forest Throne series. I don’t intend to begin actually writing this for perhaps a year, but I want to lock in the ideas generated so far.
Work some on Nature: The Artwork of God. This may be the next book I write (still trying to decide), so I need to expand the notes I’ve already taken.
Finish the new Danny Tompkins short story and decide what to do with it.
Read for research for the next book in the Documenting America series. Actually, until I do my research, I don’t know if this will be the next one or not.
Oh, one more: Finish and submit my article on a genealogical brick wall to the NWA Genealogical Society. The contest deadline is Dec 31. The article has been done for almost two months. Time to dust it off and do a final edit.
Is this considered a craft? Oh, no, I did a craft! What’s to become of me? I feel the dendrites in my nervous system getting all worried.
Whether the pandemic is over or not, it’s good to be coming out of it. To go to the grocery store and not wear a mask. To go to church, not wear a mask, and get a cup of coffee (while staying 6 ft. distanced the whole time). To have long-interrupted groups meet for the first time in over a year. Yes, while we realize the spread of the virus isn’t over, and questions remain as to the effectiveness of the vaccine against all mutations of the virus, it’s still good to open up.
One group I belong to has been meeting. The Northwest Arkansas Letter Writers took a few months off, then decided to meet outdoors. I joined this group in March 2020 and attended one meeting before the pandemic hit. These are people who enjoy writing letters, on paper, that get sent through the mail. We have been meeting at a church not too far from me, under a drive-under at the back door, skipping the coldest and hottest months. That was good to keep seeing each other and talk about our letter writing activities.
Another group I’m a member of is the Scribblers & Scribes of Bella Vista. This is a writers critique group. We had our last meeting at a library in early March 2020. We typically had four or five people attend out of six active members. One of those has moved away; two others were new and we don’t know what their current interest is. Three of us were core members who rarely missed a meeting. While we were shut down, we sent pieces for critique by e-mail and received feedback the same way, but it wasn’t quite the same as reading pages in front of other writers and receiving comments then.
We began meeting again last Tuesday, all except me, as I had a one time church meeting to attend. I e-mailed in for critique the beginning of a short story. I’ll have to wait for the July meeting to see them all again. Anyone reading this who is interested in a writing critique group can find us through MeetUp.
The other group I’m a member of is the Village on the Lakes Writers and Poets. This group is a diverse bunch of writers, a fair number being poets. They met once a month at a writers retreat center in Bella Vista, sometimes as many as 20 people. The meetings were about inspiration for and education concerning writing, along with read-around of our work. Then the pandemic hit. The March 2020 meeting was cancelled. By April we were ready for Zoom meetings and did this every month during the pandemic.
In May, the State having lifted many restrictions, we met at a coffee shop, just five of us, and did some planning and dreaming. In June, we met at a pavilion of one of Bella Vista’s parks. One of our two group leaders led us in an exercise. Now, I hate writing exercises. I’m not sure why; I’d just rather write what I want to write and be done with it. But I took part. The leader had brought plucked off leaves, colored pens, pencils, and sketching paper. We were to trace a leaf (or leaves, whatever we wanted), then take fifteen minutes to write about it, after which we read our exercise to the group.
Not trace. I’m not exactly sure what this craft is called. Put the leaf on wax paper, then a sketch sheet above it, and rub the leaf through the paper so that the features come through. Leaf rubbing I suppose it’s called. My leaf didn’t want to cooperate. I chose yellow as my rubbing color. Probably not the best, as yellow doesn’t show well. The thick parts of the leaf didn’t show well, so I took a green pencil and traced them.
As to the writing, I stared at my leaf and couldn’t think of a thing. Then I took note of the dendritic pattern of the leaf and remembered an e-mail discussion with my now-deceased friend, Gary Boden, and a train of though came to mind. Here’s what I wrote and read to the group.
Dendritic Passage
As the trace of the leaf shows more prominently the division of segments—i.e. the spine and the hard, thick parts, so is my writing life and all that has brought me to this point. These start at the periphery and end at the bottom of the stem in what is called a dendritic pattern.
Dendritic? Yes, that’s the term. We used it in hydrology to describe the nature of a drainage basin, coming together from the far-flung edges and arriving at the main channel. But I think the word comes from the natural sciences, for I first heard it from Gary, a zoologist by education who ended up his career in computer systems. Branches coming together but with a fabric between them is what makes a dendritic pattern.
As I look at this leaf from an unknown plant and see its dendritic pattern, I see my writing. Each little spine is a genre that captures some of my time and results in a book or story. The latch-key teen experiences resulted in the Danny Tompkins stories. The many places visited early in adult life are being turned into the Sharon Williams stories and Operation Lotus Sunday. My love of God’s story and His word & church has moved to a branch that is the church history novels and
Hydrology, botany, and neurology (if that’s the right word) all make use of the term dendritic. Who knew?
At that point the leader said “Time.” When I read what I had to the group, someone talked about the dendritic pattern of the nervous system. I later looked up a dictionary definition, and both the pattern of a tree and the nervous system were used in the definition of dendritic. And the word “dendrite” for the first time came to my attention. Guess I should have figured that.
This is not a profound post. I have no conclusion to draw, no inspirational thing to write. Just an observations. Groups are coming back. I took part in a writing exercise. I did a craft-like thing and lived to write about it. All is not right with the world, but it was better that day when we met.
My camera is not with me right now. When it is, I’ll edit in a photo of my leaf rubbing, quite possibly the first and last I’ll ever do. Now, on to my day’s dendritic activities.
Oh, and why did I write “Passage” instead of “Pattern” in the title? I guess I don’t know.
I’m a little late with my post this Monday morning. The weekend was busy and I didn’t get it written ahead of time. Then, this morning Lynda had to go for a Covid19 test ahead of a procedure on Wednesday. Her appointment was at 7:50 and we were to be there fifteen minutes early. It was a drive-by testing site, and the long line of cars moved quickly through. A stop for gas and pastries on the way home, and here I am, finally writing this.
Over the weekend and late last week my thoughts began to gel about my next writing tasks. It was Friday (I think; maybe Saturday) that I documented a couple of book ideas and wrote them in a Word document and saved them to my “Ideas” folder. They’ve been bugging me and, while I’m now purposely suppressing writing ideas as come, these two pre-date my decision to suppress, so I wanted to be done with them to free up brain space for other things.
What to do next? I have a novel-in-progress that’s stalled. I have a book I’m updating. I have a short story that’s bugging me. I have the next book in the Documenting America series to begin. And that’s not everything. I needed to prioritize.
So I took a little time to brainstorm that and decide what to do next, and why. Here’s what I decided.
Published in 2011, I really need to do something with this, update it for later publications and correct some formatting errors. So, I began the editing work in early September 2020, and hope to re-publish by the end of September.
Republish Documenting America: Lessons From The United States’ Historical Documents. I had already done most of the editing. An hour and it would be ready for publishing tasks. My reason for putting this first is I want to run some Amazon ads on it, beginning in about two weeks when I participate in the next Amazon ads challenge. I want an updated book to advertise.
Edited to add: I forgot, when I posted this earlier, that I have to make a few corrections to my second genealogy book, Stephen Cross and Elizabeth Cheney of Ipswich. A few of the figures were of poor quality. I need to load them into G.I.M.P and improve the quality, put them in the book file, then upload the revised file. As much as I hate doing graphic arts with G.I.M.P. I’ve been putting this off. I think, however, that I’ll slip this in after I finish re-publishing Documenting America.
Return to work on The Teachings, the volume 3 in my church history novel series, which will plug the gap between volume 2 and 4. I’m about 1/3 done with it, and need to get back.
Write, or at least start, the next story in the Danny Tompkins series of short stories. I had once thought the series finished, but an idea for one more story just won’t leave me, so I need to write it to get it out of my head. My problem is I know the main idea I want to convey, but not the full story. So when I start on it I’ll perhaps stall almost right away. I won’t know till I start the writing.
The transcription is now complete (28 Sep 2020). Time to add some commentary.
Add commentary to the Kuwait letters book. I’ve written about this before. After finishing the transcription, and before I put the letters back to storage and relegated the file to its folder and out of my mind, I added a little commentary. I’m ready to open the file and add some more commentary. I don’t know that I want to take the time to finish it, but I want to add something to it. This may be something for the odd hours between other things.
Begin reading for the next book in the Documenting America series. This is tentatively Run-up to Revolution, covering the period from 1761 to 1775 or 1776. It will be the realization that the Colonies were no longer aligned with Great Britain and a separation was inevitable. I’m not sure how I will research this. Everything I need, just about, is on-line, but how to access it and when to read it is unknown at this time.
I had a couple of other things I wanted to put on this list, but will wait. As I sit and write this nothing else is coming to mind. If it does before the end of the day, I’ll edit this.
Now, if I can accomplish half of this by, say, the end of 2020, I’ll feel like I’ve made progress.
The view from my ladder, five steps up. The limb looks large in this photo, but that’s deceiving. It was only 3 to 4 inches diameter.
After writing about a difficult weekend last weekend, I had a good week. That blah Monday turned out to be restful, and I recovered. It was almost as if my day of rest was Monday instead of Sunday. I hope they all won’t be like that as I teach this lesson series. I teach again this Sunday, so we’ll see how it goes.
I did some good work on the Leader’s Guide for Acts Or Faith. It’s far from finished, but I feel much better about it than I did even five days ago. I took my notes prepared for teaching last Sunday—the Introduction to the book—and worked them into that chapter of the Leader’s Guide. I went on to two more chapters, and am now well-along on Chapter 11.
I attended critique group Wednesday evening. We had five writers present, no visitors. Four of us shared, and we had good discussions. I shared the first four pages of “Tango Delta Foxtrot”, the next short story in my Sharon Williams Fonsesca series. I’m 2,000 words into it, heading to somewhere between 4,000 and 8,000. I hope to work a little on that in the days ahead.
I began a new activity in my daily routine: an hour or so of yard work in the late morning. Perhaps I should say I resumed that activity, for I was doing that last spring. After the late-August storm, I worked on the wood lot north of our house, clearing away the debris left after two large trees fell. Now it looks almost like a wooded, leaf-covered park. I’m now doing the same with the woodlot on the south side. This had two smaller trees down, and much deadfall from normal tree life. This is actually a much bigger job. I’ve spent four mornings on it.
On Wednesday, with all the large limbs removed, I decided to get up on a ladder and cut away a broken limb on a tree close to the house. I’m sure certain family members would be aghast at my leaning a ladder against a tree I was cutting on and then getting five steps up on that ladder. But, it was just a 3 to 4 inch limb, nothing major Having only a small, folding pruning saw that would fit the place where I wanted to cut. I got it done, taking frequent rests. It was a task accomplished that make me feel good about my work.
Speaking of tasks accomplished, on Wednesday I had this comment on my Facebook author’s page.
“Preserve The Revelation” is terrific! Each book in the series stands alone. So many authors constantly “explain” what happened in the previous book or you won’t understand the story, which I find irritating. Watching for #3 publication!”
Good feedback on this. Though fourth in the series chronologically, it is the second published, in March 2017.
It’s great to get positive feedback, especially from one who’s now reading a third book of mine. This spurred me on to work a little on the third book in the series (numbers 1, 2, and 4 currently published; she’s reading #4). For over a week I’ve been reading for research and making good progress, learning a lot. Wednesday, after reading that comment, I spent an hour making an outline of book #3, tentatively titled The Teachings. It stands at just a notebook page in length, but it’s a start.
I don’t intend on writing this book until I finish “TDF”, and perhaps one more short story in the Danny Tompkins series. Perhaps a December start is most likely. Between now and then I’ll search my various paper piles for two or three pages of notes I made earlier this year on the book, each time starting from scratch. I’ll see what my earlier thoughts were and whether I remembered them and worked them into my outline.
Speaking of various paper piles, we have company coming today for an overnight stay, one of Lynda’s cousins and her husband. The clean-up of the house and yard started yesterday, and will consume much of today before they arrive. The paper piles have to go, along with other clutter.
So, I end this. I hope all who read this had a good, productive, satisfying week, and will experience the same in the weekend ahead. See you in my post on Monday.
Death does in fact change life, for those who are left to mourn.
In my last post, I started talking about the life journey I’ve been on. Several times death has punctuated that journey. At least once that death was life-changing. I allude to this in my most recent publication, When Death Changes Life. While those collected stories are officially fiction, they do come from a point of knowledge about how a death in the circumstances described will impact a family.
In my melancholy moments, I often think about another death: that of Chemala Johanan Babu. He worked for me in Kuwait. When I changed companies there and became a Director of Infrastructure Engineering Services at Kuwaiti Engineers Office, I inherited a crew that was working offsite. We were partnered with a British firm to improve one of the interstate-quality highways in Kuwait. The crew we supplied was mostly CAD technicians. They worked under the supervision of the Brits, in their office, although they were employees of our company. I had no need to do anything regarding this team. The Brits processed everything about them, even their timesheets. All I had to do was watch their billable hours get added to our department’s.
I met them all only once. When I learned that I had this crew working offsite, since I hadn’t met any of them, I made a trip across the city to meet them. They were all names to me, who became faces, but faces I wouldn’t ever have to deal with. Babu was one.
Nothing to do with, that is, until the job they were working on came to an end, and these men (about eight of them) would have to be let go. It was a sad day when I had to write them all a memo, telling them their assignment would come to an end in a month, and that we had no other work for them, and thus would have to let them go. Sad, yes, but they knew it was coming. They knew they took an assignment that would end at some point, and that their employment wasn’t needed after that. Kuwait allowed workers in their position to shop around on the open labor market, and hopefully they’d find a job with another engineering company.
The day after that memo was out, Babu was in my office. I recognized him, and realized I had seen him one other time, at the National Evangelical Church of Kuwait. There were two large Indian language congregations (Tamil and Malayalam, if I remember correctly), typically each over 1,000 in attendance, that met very early Friday morning, much earlier than the English Language Congregation, all of us sharing the same facilities. I had seen him there once, not sure why the two of us were there at the same time. Now here he was, the third time I’d seen him. I’d met him once, and then seen him. Now seeing him again, I realized who he was.
He came to plead his case to remain employed. He really needed the job, he said. There was something about his visa that wouldn’t allow him to stay in the country unemployed while looking for a job. He would have to go home. At least, now 27 years after the event, that’s how I remember it. I felt sorry for him, and said I’d see what I could do.
I checked with the other directors, scoured my own department’s workload, and had nothing. I did, however, have the promise of a couple of projects that would start soon. One was another roadway project with a different British firm; the other was improvements at a university campus. Neither project was guaranteed, but both looked good. We would know on both in a couple of months.
I decided I could take a chance, keep Babu on staff for a month while we waited on those projects, and help him out. If those projects both came through I would have to hire someone. I reasoned that keeping him on staff for a month without billable work would be no more expensive than having to go through a hiring process.
I called the off-site office to tell him the good news. He wasn’t there; had been that morning, but not since lunch. He didn’t call me that day. The next day I called again. He hadn’t yet reported to work. Later in the morning I learned the awful news. The previous day he had been to the Indian embassy on some personal business. Taking the bus to near the office, he crossed a six-lane road on foot. Except he didn’t make it. He was hit by an Iraqi driver who was in the country illegally and driving without a license. Babu was killed instantly.
A day or two later I went to pay my respects to the family. He had lived with his sister and brother-in-law in one of the poorer sections of Kuwait City. I went there to find the streets packed with people from southern India, all coming to mourn with the family. One of our senior mechanical engineers was from Babu’s province and language group. He met me and brought me up to the house, through the crowd.
Inside, I met only the brother-in-law, as the sister was wailing in another room and didn’t want to meet anyone. He and I talked about what would be done with the body, if the police were notified, if there were any mourning rituals I could participate in (such as fasting). It was a good ten-minute visit, and I was off again. The mechanical engineer thanked me over and over for coming. I hope it helped them.
So, this was part of my life journey. Not a happy part, obviously. But, as I said earlier, it’s something that always comes to mind in my melancholy moments. As I get older, and am nearer to death myself than to birth, death will become more and more a part of my life. I’ll have many more chances to grieve, and to mourn with others. Yet, the story of Babu will stay with me, forever a memorable part of my journey.
