For someone I barely knew

 I won’t pretend I lost a friend. 

The late customer wouldn’t know me. I served him for years and tolerated his sometimes-drunken stops at the store. Any friendliness felt transactional. 

I confirmed this on a Saturday morning walk in late March. As I passed him and said hello, he bared his teeth and said nothing. Even his faithful dog, who always came right to me for treats, walked past as if I was a complete unknown. He was such a fixture in the store that I never thought that would be the last time I saw him. 

Something about a regular customer dying out of nowhere hit me hard. He died weeks earlier, had a memorial, and already been forgotten by 99 percent of the people who knew him. I heard he landed in the hospital a while ago, but he had bounced back from past health collapses. He had complications from a traumatic brain injury. He was either beaten up or hit head his head and ended up in a medically induced coma, but did not recover. 

As I gradually learned the regular customers, this one stood apart. He came in the store, swaggering – well, often just staggering.  I worked nights and it was usually not his first visit.  

He wore a leather cowboy hat and leather vest for the whole summer. Wandering about with a guitar or bass guitar. Then he had amp fitted into a suitcase. He seemed to crave spectacle. The summer I worked so much, he grated on me. Everyday brought something new. First, he would set his Bluetooth speaker on the counter, drowning out our own music.  He always had the dog with him too.

But the real guy under the addiction emerged when his son died tragically. It wore on him. We treated him differently because the swagger vanished. He could be annoying at times, but never really really struck a nerve with me again.

Sometimes bad habits calcify. A good person lies beneath, but addiction and poor decisions add layer upon layer, effectively becoming the personality. Reaching the person becomes impossible, only the caricature rises. 

When sober, he was likable. He cleaned up nicely. But after his son’s death, sobriety rarely peeked out. 

I wondered immediately what happened to his dog. She was sweet, except with other dogs, which always made me fear his habit of dropping her leash when he walked in the store. One time I stood behind Vince in the post office line; he didn’t notice me, but June eyeballed me as someone who had petted her and had delivered treats at the store. When she realized I had no treats, she turned back.

When he went into the hospital, his dog went several days stuck in his apartment, but she was rescued and is with someone else now. The poor girl didn’t get a goodbye with her owner. Maybe that’s what I feel worst about, the loyal pet of a complicated person shuttled off to a new life. 

I learned long ago not to judge what little joy some people get from life, even if it’s something you try not to do. The customer hurt himself by drinking cheap schnapps, but his existence was not always a pleasant one. If those drinks soothed something in him, maybe that’s okay. 

Life weighs on us all. While there are better ways to bear it, he (mostly) didn’t hurt anyone, and he clearly cared for his canine sidekick. I’ll choose to forget the boorish behavior, and remember a good dog-father.