Pain, My Old Friend

Only pain can see itself in the mirror.

This past week, I went to Birmingham to help my uncle, who owns a small chain of fireworks stores in the area. Needless to say, the 3rd and 4th of July are his two busiest days of the year. I worked nearly 48 straight hours with nary a moment to sit down; there was a constant, harried stream of customers – from parents just buying something to entertain the kids to grown men assembling legitimate arsenals of explosives, the fireworks business was booming. Literally and figuratively.

It was late in the day on the 4th, right about the time my capacity for rational thought was surrendering to heat-soaked fatigue, when something significant happened:

Two customers walked in.

A man and a young boy.

They were two out of ten thousand. I barely even registered their entry, probably didn’t even look up. But a few moments later, I felt a subtle tap on my shoulder.

I turned to find the man staring at me, a peculiar look in his eye. The boy was there too, but as most boys would be, he was preoccupied with the stacked boxes of artillery shells in front of him.

There was a confused pause before the man pointed to the front of the store, back toward the door and the table with the cash register. There was a coil of people waiting in line and my first thought was that the man had an issue or complaint to report.

But he didn’t.

When he finally spoke, he said, “I read your book.”

I was temporarily dumbfounded – partly due to gross exhaustion and partly due to the unexpected nature of his comment – but then I realized what he was pointing at. I had signed a few dozen copies of my book and had them sitting by the register. Though I knew it was unlikely to sell many books at a fireworks store on the 4th of July (which is pretty much the existential opposite of a bookstore), my uncle had offered and I had accepted.

“I bought it this morning,” the man continued. “And I promised myself I wouldn’t read it yet. That I would wait a while. But then I opened it in spite of myself. And twenty pages later I closed it again.” He was still staring at me, the same peculiar glint in his eye. “Twenty more pages and closed. Then twenty more. And twenty more. At one point I seriously considered throwing it across the room, but I kept picking it up. For reasons I can’t explain. And now I’m here.”

There was another confused silence, but what came next surpassed the profundity of the stars on a clear summer night: it couldn’t be explained, it simply was.

Turns out, the man had recently lost his wife to cancer. The boy, who was now staring at me with the same meaningful gaze as his father, had lost his mom.

We stood there, right next to the artillery shells, a swarm of flame-hungry pyromaniacs encircling us, as three broken vessels. We talked for nearly an hour, about love, loss, and the crushing shadow it all leaves behind. And somewhere along the way, I understood the peculiar look in the man’s eye, the strange way he and his son had stared at me.

I interpreted it, saw it for what it truly was.

It was recognition.

We were complete strangers. And yet, as the man walked away, both of us with tears gathering in our eyes, we departed each other’s company as old friends.

Sometimes pain, especially deep pain, can only be reached by other pain.

It’s an odd thing, and a powerful one.

Only pain can see itself in the mirror.

A fellow journeyer,

Bryan