"Lookie here," he asked blowing halos into the sky. "No matter what anybody says. We're the ones who did this."
"Hmm," I huffed shrugging my shoulders.
"Joseph ... I always called him that in honor and remind him that he's up there with the man who raised Jesus ... "in a hundred years nobody is going to remember any of this."
His baby blue eyes cut like a knife right through me. "God will remember," he spit.
Who can argue with that?
We sat in silence for a while.
I love Joe. An alcoholic who found sobriety and talked me into hiring him as the maintenance man when there was no money for such things. He could panhandle with the best of them. He grew a maintenance department and more than paid for himself and it. The man cared deeply about ... everything.
"Well then," I finally said as I stood, "if God's going to be the only one to remember, let's leave everybody else a hint."
"Hmmm?," he asked without actually using a word.
Concrete had been poured that day for an unplanned addition. I led him there and we wrote our names in it.
"Nobody's ever going to find this," he giggled as only a deep throat, chain smoking, recovered alcoholic can do.
"One day," I said, happy that he was happy, "or it'll just be you, me and God who knows."
That was a long time ago.
Joe died last year. His body just gave out though his heart never did. Mine broke when his daughter Kelly told me.
"Crossroads seem to come and go ..." says Greg Allman, and it's certainly true.
Today someone else I used to work with sent a round about communication through Facebook that she's keeping up with me.
I don't care.
I loved her deeply once and we did many good things together. Then she stopped caring ... or cared about other things more ... and in the end a lot of good people were badly hurt.
She's either doing penitence, good Christian that she is, or seeking forgiveness without actually asking for it.
But she killed a piece of my heart and it'll never glow again.
Joseph Bridges, on the other hand, shines bright and makes me proud still. He makes me giggle at the secret place where our names are written ... now only God and I know where.
It's sad, isn't it, what work can do to us? Work will take everything you give it and if you give it everything it will take everything (thanks to people like the Board Chair who chooses to remain anonymous ... Jerry Rainy and others).
But Joseph knew.
And I know.
And God knows too.
