That Time When ... A Delivery Took an Unexpected Turn

Sometime before I was a Tech Writing Manager, QA Manager, or Test Engineer and sometime after I did data entry for a newspaper, TA’d for a computer class for senior citizens, and was a Sandwich Artist – I worked as a Logistics Engineer at a local flower shop. I delivered flowers for 4-5 years during and after college. There are some things I miss about being delivering flowers. The regular push to interact with diverse people who were experiencing a very broad cross-section of human experience. Most folks know about the positive things: celebrations, birthdays, anniversaries, new babies, and holidays. But we also made deliveries for sad events: to funeral homes, gravesides, and wakes.

One day, I had a leafy green plant to deliver. I remember parking the van in front of a single story apartment complex and walking up to the door. The horizontal blinds are drawn shut, despite the warm and sunny Southern California afternoon weather. In my left palm, the potted plant. Under that arm, my delivery clipboard. I reach up my right hand and go for three moderate knocks on the door. Two knocks is too incidental, four knocks too insistent. Hard knocks can come across as threatening, soft knocks can go unheard.

After a moment, the door slowly opens. A middle aged man in his pajamas stands in the door. The man’s appearance was disheveled – his eyes are red and puffy, face unshaven, hair in disarray.

The next thing I notice is the smell of cigarette smoke, heavy both on the man and wafting out of the apartment. Instinctively, my eyes scan the entry way of the dark apartment. The entry way opens directly into the living room. A sofa sits in front of a window. A coffee table sits in front of the sofa. On the coffee table, an ash tray – many cigarette butts had found their home in that tray.

“Delivery for Mr. _____?”

He acknowledges my question and signs the clipboard. I hand over the plant, which now seems smaller and less green than it did a moment ago. In slow motion, he sets it on the coffee table. Cigarette in hand, he opens the attached card. His eyes alternate between looking at the plant and the card. I remain in the doorway. He sits opposite the sofa and window. When he sits, he sits with unknowable weight on his shoulders.

“I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do to help?”

I don’t know why I said that. I am on the clock, I have other deliveries. My boss expects this delivery to take 15 minutes. Furthermore, I don’t know anything about this person and feel utterly ill-equipped to provide anything of value.

From this point on, I don’t remember anything he says. I remember the smell of cigarettes. I know that I sat on the couch. I know that as I sat on that couch, this man shared and wept. Loudly. Openly. A tightly held grief that burst forth in great waves.

Time passed. I remember getting back into the delivery van. My limbs and time itself feeling leadened and weighted. What happened? How long was I there? I wasn’t sure. I knew that I bore some of the man’s grief – but also a different feeling. I only now am beginning to have the vocabulary to describe that time. Intimate, weighty, and … sacred. A brief window into another soul’s grief and sorrow.

I drive back to the flower shop. My explanation of what had happened to my boss was met with some bewilderment. I don’t know what happened to that man afterwards. But I’ve never forgotten him, this story, and the hope that somehow, the brief moment I spent with him brought some daylight into his life.

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