Thursday, June 22, 2006

Calm Summer Night

Richard Cory
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich -- yes, richer than a king --
And admirably schooled in every grace;
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
***
The multimillionaire owner of the company I work for went out alone on his sailboat twelve days ago and shot himself in the head. Today I was one of about 900 people who attended his memorial service. The Vice President of the United States and a former CIA director spoke. Reporters and cameras lined the perimeter of the cavernous, columned auditorium.
There were major differences between him and Richard Cory -- in physical appearance, personality, and perception by those who worked for him (think of the opposite of all of those as they pertain to Richard Cory and you'll be close). But I can't help thinking of this poem anyway.
Monday morning, when I read the headline in the paper stating how he'd died (he'd been lost for many days, the cause of his death a mystery until then), I flopped into a chair and exclaimed, "Oh, my God!" to nobody.
It was strange to "mourn" a man who barely knew who I was during my 23 years of off-and-on working for his company. Last summer, at a goodbye party for a colleague who was leaving for a yearlong fellowship, the now-deceased man came over and congratulated me. I said, "Uh, he's over there." At least I can take comfort that one other person in that story was as invisible to him as I was.
He was a successful, rich, loud, profane, impatient, savvy, ambitious, temperamental, bombastic, bullying man who also had a civilized, apparently respectful, and often even warm relationship with a lot of people. He seems to have been a genuinely good father, judging from his children's tributes today (though I'm really glad he wasn't my father).
I realized today that the reason I was one of the relatively few people who worked "with" him but had virtually no relationship with him is that I'm quiet, keep to myself, don't promote myself or my work very much. I'm not a schmoozer, I'm not extroverted, I'm not a gladhander. My job is by nature behind the scenes, and my personality makes it more so -- after all, there are others who do what I do yet who knew and related to him in some fashion.
The more significant realization, though, was that my immediate boss, the layer between me and his boss -- the deceased -- never touted me to him. Never said, "This is [Billy] -- he does X." Or "[Billy], come over here and tell _________ about that project you're working on." Or "[Billy] was responsible for that thing you were talking to me about."
Those of my coworkers who had a relationship with __________ (and there apparently were more of them than I realized) had one, I believe, because they were championed in some way -- even a small way, even a superficial way -- by our immediate boss.
If there was no championing, there was no reason for the Big Boss to even know who you were.
So then why was I lying awake in the middle of the night last night, chilled by the thought of him alone on a vast body of water twelve days ago, putting a shotgun to his head? Why could I not get to sleep, wondering what he had said to his wife before leaving the house on a seemingly routine afternoon sailing jaunt?
What else was I trying to feel? What else was I wishing I could feel?

2 Comments:

Blogger dykewife said...

you reminded me of the song that paul simon wrote and he and art garfunkel sang "richard cory." i hadn't thought of that song for a very long time. your last couple of sentences reminded me specifically of the last lines of the last verse:

So my mind was filled with wonder when the evening headlines read:
"Richard Cory went home last night and put a bullet through his head."


i hope you come to some closure of your feelings around the death of your employer. depression is a odd thing and can catch people unawares.

11:07 PM  
Blogger Nell Minow said...

I, too, have been haunted by this story.

And I thank you for this meaningful and evocative meditation on what we can know about ourselves and those around us, and what we want known about us and by whom.

I had a bit of a disagreement with my husband last night, in fact, about this man's choice. "He was sick," my husband said. "He didn't want to live that way." I think almost all of us would agree that anyone should be able to make that choice. Two outstanding movies that came out in late 2004 presented that idea -- "The Barbarian Invasions" and "The Sea Inside" (based on a true story). But those men made their deaths a last gift to those who loved them. For your boss to leave his family with this kind of a shock seems cruel and selfish.

What interested me most, though, about your thoughts was the way this experience made you think about the way you are known. Again, not to get too meta on you, but your form equals content in your own choice of what to reveal and how, very consistent with the way you describe yourself as not wanting to be a shmoozer or gladhander. The choice of those words shows that you don't want to be anything else but there is something of a questioning tone in what you wrote.

I think people who are not shmoozers or gladhanders or pushing themselves and their work forward are lucky. They can find what they need within themselves and those deserving few who are privleged to be welcome and allowed to be close to them. I don't think shmoozers and gladhanders are any less lonely or uncertain. In fact, I know that. And so did the man who shot himself.

3:30 PM  

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