i don’t write about work very often. which makes this blog lopsided and artificially lightweight, considering that my work is the thing i spent the largest portion of my time engaging with, thinking on, challenged by, dreaming about, worrying over, and/or being inspired by. but i try to adhere to the rule of posting nothing on the internet that i wouldn’t share with my mother or my boss. as i became a manager, that extended to things i wouldn’t want my employees to see, either. that gradually just made it harder and harder to write about work and so i stopped. according to this blog i live a bucolic life of baking, running, knitting, and fixing houses. i mean, i practically sitting around eating bonbons. not really.
except today i’m going to write about work.
one of my staff members died in a rock climbing accident last week. i’ll refer to him as BW here, out of courtesy to his family who have not given me leave to write about their son.
BW was our master electrician. he was the youngest member of my staff, and dangerously smart, the kind of smart that sometimes interfered with his ability to relate to and communicate with the normal human beings. on the surface he was quiet and reserved, but once you scratched the surface he could be wickedly funny. he seized on things that interested him with a sort of ferocity. he was briefly interested in running, so he decided to run the 16 miles from his house to the theatre. he wanted to build more muscle strength on his slight frame, so he joined a crossfit gym where tattooed soccer moms practically bench pressed him. working as the master electrician didn’t provide him with enough opportunities to hang suspended in the air, so he took up aerial circus classes and rock climbing in his spare time. it was as though he was pushing his body to meet the extraordinary performance metrics that came standard with his brain. like he was trying to balance the yin and yang of his physical body and his intelligence.
he often seemed like a loner, but it was actually just a combination of fierce independence and an burning interest in everything the world has to offer. there was no time to wait around trying to find someone else who wanted to go the same way. he pursued his interests with or without company, finding kindred spirits and traveling a while with them before continuing on his own path. i recognized this in him, because i share some of this tendency. it is both immensely satisfying and also a lonely way to move through the world.
every two- or three-day (or two- or three-week) span of free time that he could grab between shows would have him hopping in his car and running off to climb a mountain somewhere. when his work schedule made it impossible for him to leave town, he took aerial circus classes. i had to enact new safety rules in light of his passion for hanging in the air – no practicing aerial circus tricks in the theatre, no napping in a hammock suspended 20 feet above the stage, and so forth. i caught him working in the grid without a safety harness enough times that i had to discipline him with formal write-ups, warnings that rolled off him like water off a duck’s back.
BW was the sort of person who would accidently smash, misplace or otherwise disable his phone with some regularity, and go days without replacing it. disappearing off the grid was normal for him. he had taken his entire summer vacation to go camping and rock climbing solo in california. so when our management assistant got a call last wednesday from a deputy sheriff in california asking when we’d last heard from BW, i found it worrisome but i talked myself out of imagining any real danger. surely he’d just dropped his phone down a ravine and decided to finish his trip and pick up a new phone enroute to the airport on sunday. i expected him to arrive at work on monday looking sheepish and i’d scold him for not calling his mother often enough and causing her (and me) to worry.
but he didn’t turn up on monday. instead, i learned late friday night that he’d sustained fatal injuries when he fell nearly 500 feet while climbing in the high sierras of central california. i stayed up half that night, swinging between disbelief and guilt, anger and relief and more guilt.
guilt, for the many times that i wished BW would quit, so that I could replace him with a less difficult employee.
more guilt, over the fact that if i was a better, tougher manager, i wouldn’t have let him get away with taking an extra week of vacation. i would have insisted that he come back to work the week prior and now he’d be safely with us, resenting me but still alive.
relief, followed by guilt for having felt such selfish relief, that he didn’t die in an accident while working in my theatre. offering his mother my condolences was one of the hardest things i’ve ever done. i can’t even imagine what it would take to speak to his parents if he’d died on my watch.
and anger, at him for doing something so stupid as falling off a mountain. search and rescue told his parents that he didn’t make a mistake; it was just a freak accident. a mountain that has stood for hundreds of thousands of years decided not to stand any longer and crumbled beneath his feet. still, i know that BW took chances. maybe he didn’t make a technical error in the moment leading to his death. but he truly never believed that he could fall, and he placed himself in high risk situations because of that. this was a source of much conflict between us.
after a week, all that anger and relief and guilt and disbelief have morphed into sort of tired sadness. i think we are headed the same direction, me and tired and sad. i guess we three will travel together for a while.
i woke on saturday morning knowing i had to do a lot of really hard things. there were many dozens of phone calls, emails and texts to be sent in the process of notifying all the members of my staff, of our company, and of the theatre community. and i had to call his parents.
when i’m facing a difficult day, i start by going running. the tougher the day, the harder or faster i run. i run until i catch up with the calm and the strength that i need. i find it in the miles, in the sweat, in the sunrise over choppy lake waters. saturday morning i woke up drained and exhausted after four hours of fitful sleep. i was in no physical shape for a run. and yet, once i got out the door and headed for the lake, running felt like flying. it freed me, the way it always does. i had space to compose my thoughts and gather my courage for the day ahead. to make my voice strong and my words kind. running is my solace, my strength, my muse. and i think that’s how BW felt when he was climbing. like he was free. flying. i hope he found his solace and his strength out there.
this was the last thing he posted on facebook:
farewell, BW. thanks for traveling alongside me for a while.
