T'ai Chi Boxers and Ashes, Ashes

Phil, left, and Ed, at their finest. RIP, guys, you're missed!

 

One of the best things about teaching t’ai chi ch’uan for 20 years has been getting to hear my student’s stories. I’ve had an amazing number of students and most have lived really interesting lives. Amongst them have been a number of artists, a sharp-shooter, musicians, a priest, carpenters, potters, teachers, a flute-maker, lawyers, doctors, fencers, actors, several people in wheelchairs, a foster mother for babies born with drug dependencies, a professional belly-dancer, computer geeks, librarians, people from many different countries, visionaries, other martial artists  – many, many people, and every single one with their own compelling, and fascinating, stories. 

Phil was a typical Irishman. He had sparkling blue eyes, was as handsome as Irishmen come, full of mischief, and was himself a collector of people and their stories. He had been in WWII and still carried in his body the unremoveable detritus of his dangerous military job, and as he grew older, this became more problematic. But he wasn’t bitter - the military had sent him to many places, and consequently he knew people from around the world, and that was most important to him. When he again became a civilian he was, for a time, a manager for the Sears company, which became another route to the people he collected and travel that gave his collections an extra savor. Phil didn’t just meet people – he got to know them, he became their friends, and he somehow kept in touch over decades and far distances.  In the same class was Ed, another story-teller of excellence, who matched Phil in his ability to create mischief. One day, the two of them showed up in class tickled pink and giggling about their latest joke: over their sweats they were wearing boxer shorts adorned with yin/yang symbols.

Phil knew so many people and had been so many places that it became a class game to try to stump him. No matter who was mentioned, no matter what small town was brought up, Phil inevitably either knew the person or a close relative of theirs, and had either been to the town (state/province/country) or knew someone who was from there. Finally, a Native American, part-Apache student took up the challenge. “OK,” she said. “I know someone you can’t possibly know. Do you know Mrs. X?” she asked.

Phil thought for a moment and then turned on his crystal ball. “Oh, does she live in a pink house with a picket fence and a flower garden full of tall sunflowers on the XXX reservation in Arizona?” he asked. 

“How do you know that!!?” my warrior student exclaimed.

“I had tea with her one day about 30 years ago,” Phil answered, then went on to describe in perfect detail the tea set, the sitting room, the curio case in the sitting room and its contents, and the woman in question. “How do you know her?” he finally asked.

“She’s my Aunty!” was the exclamation.

The half-hour I needed to add to class time to allow time for story-telling was always filled with tales and laughter. One wintery day, Ed mentioned that he and his wife had moved to NH years ago from the flatlands down south, after having spent many summers up here and falling in love with the place. They decided to make the state their home, but a friend suggested they maybe rent a place through a whole winter first to make sure they could deal with New England snow and ice, something they’d only experienced in short bursts on holiday trips up until then. 

“It was a good idea so we rented a house in a neighborhood near where we spent summers,” he explained, “and we were outside shoveling snow after a big storm and sprinkling ashes from the woodstove on the slippery layer of ice underneath, when I noticed that the little old neighbor lady next door was outside doing the same thing. 

“‘You shouldn’t be shoveling by yourself,’ I called over to her. You should get your husband to help you with that.’

“She looked up from her ash-scattering and lifted the jar so I could see it. ‘He is helping,’ she said, nodding towards the jar. ‘Who do you think this is?’”

Uproar ensued; then all eyes turned to Phil. Could he possibly top that story? Not possible.

The T'ai Chi Tu at RavenStar in Andover, NH

“That reminds me of a year when I was managing the Sears store in town,” he started. “I had a new employee, a promising young man. In the middle of the Christmas holiday rush, he came to me, very apologetic, and asked for a day off. He had a personal matter, a family matter, that he needed to deal with, and he was very sorry about the timing, but could he have the next day off?

“I was impressed that he asked instead of just calling in sick, so I played with the schedules and told him I could manage to give him the next day free, but I really needed him back for the evening rush.  ‘I’ll  be able to be back here in plenty of time,’ the young man replied. ‘What I need to deal with shouldn’t take too long.’

“Next day, he was late – very late - so late, in fact, that he didn’t show up until next morning. When he finally arrived, near to noon time, I called him into my office to growl at him. ‘You’d better have a really good explanation,’ I said to him. I noticed he was a little pale, and seemed shaky. What was going on here?

“The young man sat down and said, ‘It’s a story. You’d better sit. It’s going to take a few minutes to tell it.

“Last spring, my best buddy died unexpectedly. Everyone was terribly shaken up, especially his young widow, who is also a close friend of mine. My buddy spent his summers growing up, and every spare moment he could manage throughout his life, on or near Lake Champlain. He loved that lake. After he died, his body was cremated, and his widow asked me to scatter his ashes over the lake. I’m a pilot, and my buddy also loved to fly, so we agreed this would be a fitting disposition of his remains.

“I was supposed to do it this summer, but stuff kept coming up, and I never got to it. Now the holidays are coming – I needed to get it done, partly because I don’t want to admit to his widow that my bud’s ashes are still at my house, and partly because the lake’s still ice-free - but if I don’t hurry it’s going to be next summer before I can do it. So I arranged to rent a small plane up in Burlington, and I figured I’d get up early, get the plane, fly over the lake and give my buddy the send-off he’d have wanted, and then have plenty of time to return the plane and get back down here by 5 pm.

“So there I was: floating over the lake in a beautiful sky. The friend who was going to come with me to actually release the ashes couldn’t make it at the last minute, but, heck, I figured it was better to get it done at this point than put it off again. I’m over the middle of the lake flying low, I open the window, I take the cover off the urn and hang it out the window, and – the wind shifts, and all the ashes, instead of floating down into the beautiful lake waters, blow back into the cockpit and totally coat everything: me, the seats, the floor, the instruments, the windshield…

“I’m freaking out. My buddy’s filled the plane, and human ashes are oily. I land the plane and try to brush him up back into the urn, and immediately see this isn’t going to work, I’m just spreading and smearing. I can’t take the plane back in this condition – I’m trying to think, what can I do, what can I do? So I go into the little airport up there, and there’s a woman vacuuming the terminal floors. Can I borrow the vacuum cleaner for a few minutes, please? I’ll buy you some coffee so you can take a break, I’ll bring the vacuum right back, I promise, just gotta neaten up the plane before I return it.

“She agrees, so I grab the vacuum and a long extension cord, and hurry out to the plane. I’m still freaking out, but, phew, it looks like this is going to work. I vacuum up my buddy, and a wet paper towel removes the few smears he’d made, and it’s fortunately a shop vac so I let it suck up the smeared paper towels, too. I’m just headed back into the airport to return the vacuum when I realize –

“Oh, NO! Now my buddy’s ashes are in the vacuum cleaner with the paper towels and whatever other crap the janitor had sucked up before I borrowed it! I can’t leave him there and lie to his widow about what happened, I just can’t. So I sneak back into the airport and haul the vacuum with me into the men’s room, because the wind that shifted and started this problem has now picked up and it’s really starting to blow, so I don’t dare try to get the ashes out of the vacuum outdoors, they’ll end up everywhere. I open up the vacuum in the men’s room, and it’s full of stuff: tissues, coffee cups, stirrers, cigarette butts, all sorts of junk, and a lot of dirt from the airport floors, besides; and the ashes have covered everything. Just totally covered all that trash. And it’s a bag-less vacuum, so the vacuum canister is coated, too.

“I’m really freaking out now. I’m standing there screaming into my brain, when I notice the trash cans. I yank the top off one and, wow, it had recently been emptied, and it has a bag in it. I dump what’s there into a second trash can, dump the contents of the vacuum into the empty plastic garbage bag, grab some more towels and wipe my buddy’s ashes off the insides of the vacuum and add the paper towels to the bag, close it up, and sneak the vacuum back out into the terminal, just as the janitor is coming back looking for her gear. I thank her and quickly head back to the plane before she asks me about the garbage bag.

“So now I’ve got a trash bag full of trash covered with my buddy’s ashes, and it’s getting too late to do anything except return the plane and figure out another plan. I return the plane and head through town down to the shore, to try to figure out what to do, what I’m going to tell the widow, where I can put the trash bag that isn’t too disrespectful of my buddy. 

“I’m standing there looking out at the lake that my friend loved so much, and, I’ll admit it, I started to tear up a little. I have totally screwed up this simple chore, and haven’t a clue how to fix it. The sun’s going down, it’s already too late to get back to Concord before the store closes, and in my hand I’ve got a trash bag full of junk and my buddy’s ashes, and it’s cold, and it’s getting dark, and I’m what feels like a long, long way from home.  Then I notice that the area where I am, which was full of joggers and dog-walkers and pedestrians, is almost deserted as the sun goes down. I walk out to the end of a pier, and stare down into the cold water. I look around. Church bells are tolling. It’s very quiet. I’m alone.

“So I untie the bag, turn it upside down, and let my buddy and all the trash he’s coated silently drift down into the waters of Lake Champlain. And I turn the bag inside out, sit on the edge of the pier, and after checking to make sure no one’s nearby, hang it down into the water and swish it around. Then I let it go, too.

“And then I drove home. And, I gotta admit it, once I got there I drank too much and slept through my alarm this morning.”

The class just stared silently at Phil. “So -  what did you say to the guy?” I asked.

“I congratulated him on his ability to think and adapt under pressure and get his task done,” Phil answered.  “And warned him never to miss work again, and docked his pay for the missed day. And a month later, I promoted him – he’d proved he was a dogged and creative worker.”

I never knew if I could always believe Phil – he was, after all, a master story-teller. But in all the time I knew him, he never lost a Do-You-Know or a story challenge – not even to Ed.

This story was written for the blog.

Deb doing t'ai chi in Montreal's Chinatown, May, 2000; class trip!