A confession, of sorts
It’s no small irony that the Keats and Shelley volume that recently fell into my possession is bound upside-down.
If you see me reading its musty, water-rippled pages, you’ll have a sense of something that’s just not right. But I’ll leave to you to put together what that might mean.
The Shoe
I know how she died.
Her family relayed the details. Witnesses gave me statements.
I’ve been to the scene, read the official report, browsed the news accounts.
And now, I’m reading the coroner’s report. The days these papers skid across my desk are the ones I’d rather not show up for work. I’d like to tuck the report between the manila folds without a glance and just say it contained no helpful information.
When Treasure Holds Us
i.
He greeted me at the door, cell phone to his ear, and motioned me in before walking off to finish his business. I wound my way around boxes that crammed the entry, layers of dust telling me they’d been there for years, untouched.
I squeezed past the kneeler, thinking it awkward there in a room meant for storage. A cloud swirled up from the floor as I slipped through to the dining room, and I wondered if I looked like that Peanuts character. (more…)
When You’re Not From Around Here
Heads turned when we walked through the door, in that certain way heads do when y’aren’t from around here, are you’se?
In the lone cafe in a town of less than 400, the kind of town where the city office closes down once a week for no better reason than that it’s Wednesday, it’s not at all hard to spot the strangers.
It didn’t help, I suppose, that we dropped a stack of files on the table in the checkered-floor fifties-style diner before we even saw the menu. We cranked open a laptop and kept trying to make cell phone calls to schedule appointments where everyone knows that intermittent service really means none at all.
We certainly were not from around here.
A Day in the Life
Call me if you don’t hear from me again in 15 minutes.
I don’t make a habit of sending texts like that. But on days that start like this, I do.
The homeowner lives out of town and wouldn’t be at his seasonal home when I arrived. So he told me where I could find a plastic bag containing a key.
I dug this baggie out from its super secret hiding place, then brushed off spiders, ants and some other red insect that runs very fast on tiny legs when disturbed. A wriggly fellow was a little more stubborn. And I wondered if he had ingested the key.
It was not in the crawly, slimy, mud caked sandwich bag of treasure.
I tried the side door, just in case it had been left unlocked.
It had.
Under the House
Speaking of really cool offices . . .
The dogs are a couple of show offs. When I pulled in, one was digging at the thawing ground with a paw, unaware of anything but dirt. The other scratched behind an ear, yawned. I took note that the pen was closed before I got out. Not much had changed since the last time.
On Being Made Whole
When our policyholder backed his milk truck out of the yard, he took a bit of the farmer’s fence with him. A post and split rail fence, hewn of cedar and weathered hard over twenty-five years of wind and rain and snow.
The same fence the kids all climbed and fell off and tore their jeans on. The same fence where they tied the horses and the dogs lifted their back legs. The same fence where they took the family Christmas picture in 1992, the year the eldest left home. And 1997, the year the baby came. And 2003, the year before Mom died.
Twenty-five feet of that twenty-five year fence now lay in splinters between the alfalfa and the gravel driveway.
We owed the farmer the fence we broke. But we didn’t have twenty-five years to weather a new set of rails and gird up the posts with the rich stories of his life.
So how would he be made whole? (more…)
But Dogs Like This, They Do
I pulled into the driveway and stopped the car, getting a sense of the place as I unbuckled my seatbelt. The Risk, as we call a property. Maybe we’ll say Dwelling if we’re feeling a little homier.
Holiday decorations hung askew on the wire fence around the front of the house. Festive.
I caught myself hoping that meant she had a soft side. But a few letters were missing from the season’s greeting. Last year’s decorations. I suspected that festive wore off a long time ago.
Gravel crunched under my soles as I leaned out of the driver’s seat to lace my boots and I let out breath from clear inside them.
She’s an angry one. Angrier than I’ve been dealt in a long time. (more…)
Dogs Like this Don’t Bark
The dark blue shop coat hangs to his knees, Elton emblazoned white across the left chest pocket. His name is not Elton. A thrift store find, no doubt. It’s a good match to the feed store cap that shadows his face, always pushed groundward by life-burdened shoulders bending low.
He’s scooping ash from his back entry into a pile of debris that changes every day. Seems it grows neither larger nor smaller. He shovels and pushes and rearranges.
But it’s the same black pile of once-was. Can matter, piled just right, become a void?
I Need Bad Stuff to Happen to You
We may as well get it out of the way right now: I need bad stuff to happen to you.
Your loss, you see, is my gain.
As I sit with Google Maps this morning plotting out a whirlwind tour across northern Iowa (four cities, thirty hours, 901 miles and a lot of carbonated caffeine in a shiny green can), I chastise myself for the occasional quiet wish that misfortune would occur closer to home.
At least as a staff adjuster for an insurance company, I could root for sales reps to sell a multitude of policies on which folks would never have to make claims. In my perfect world you would purchase your peace of mind, but never have to call on us to deliver on the promise of financial security. Besides widespread destruction, major claims events inflate workloads and erase quarterly bonuses in a blink.
We wished for smooth waters, gentle breezes, and no more than BB sized hail.
But now? As an independent contractor I switch channels between Minnesota Twin baseball and the Weather Channel while an occasional Yessss! slips out when the weather starts getting rough.
I only work when people’s stuff gets ruined, or they crash into each other, or somebody gets hurt.
So really, I need bad stuff to happen.
::
Sometimes I feel a little conflicted about that.
Well, a lot of times I feel a lot conflicted about that.
I desire that hard luck not come your way, while at the same time I harbor a (not so) secret need for a steady stream of mishaps and the occasional catastrophe to earn my keep.
I imagine that folks in other professions face a similar conflict once in a while: doctors, mechanics, firefighters, journalists . . . Prevention, maintenance and feel-good stories only go so far to buy baby’s new shoes. Though I’ll admit, I have a hard time picturing any of them wishing ill on their fellow man like I may at times be tempted to do.
Would a funeral director’s thoughts really wander down that road during a quiet stretch? Really?
As I actively trust God to provide for our needs, and know that at least in part that will come through the hardship of others, sometimes the conflict cuts a little deep. (And no, I did not just blame God for the roof that blew off your neighbor’s house. That’s a seminary question for another day.)
Praying for that provision, some days, feels a little funny inside me.
How do we reconcile those kinds of conflicts between our hearts and hard reality in our work?
Here’s the time-tested answer that has served me throughout my claims career: I have no idea.
I really don’t.
I carry on, conflicted or not.
::
On a good day, I know that what I do is a good thing if you’ve just suffered a loss. I can make certain that the insurance company that hired me knows what sort of compensation you’re entitled to.
Sometimes I can even help you feel like you’re not alone in the middle of your disaster. Somebody besides you knows what happened, and how horrible it was, and how much you lost that you can’t get back, and how bad your back hurts and your leg hurts and all the things you’re not sure you can ever do again.
I don’t always have those good days, but when I’m thinking clearly I tell myself, I didn’t make it happen, but I can sure help a person through it.
And that’s a good thing, right?
I can’t control the weather, or drivers, or icy patches on sidewalks that make people slip and fall. And I promise that when I see hope in straight-line winds or a five-car pile up or frozen tater tots falling from the sky, it’s always tempered with the prayer that no one gets hurt and everybody’s premium is paid up.
The bad stuff comes. Accidents happen. Rain falls. Winds blow.
While I get all tied up in knots about how that might profit me, I also remember that since I can say nothing about where and when it will happen, I can work hard to see that my work makes a difference in somebody else’s adversity.
In the midst of the conflict that arises from how I earn a living, the words of Micah help me sort it. For a claims adjuster who wants to sleep at night, they’re really pretty good words.
He has showed you, O man, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:8)
::
Somewhere along the line, we all face that inner conflict of some sort in our work, whether on the job or in our families. Maybe you’re cooler than me, and you don’t wish for bad stuff to happen. But what do you do to reconcile your work and your heart when they don’t get along?
The Conversation