The Night Tom Died

On a spring night, that was not all that memorable for any other reason, one of the patrons at 1762 left the bar to walk 150 feet to his front door. He never made it.

I didn't know Tom and never had the occasion to talk with him. We would say hello, but the conversation never ventured beyond that point. Don't know what he did for a living, don't know anything about his family, the car he drove, not anything more than his first name, and that he drank tap beer. Bud, I believe, but even of that I am unsure.

Tom was quieter than the average 1762er. He was a tall man in his 50's, wore thin black framed glasses, and had a shock of very gray hair that appeared to have a mind of its own. I imagine that his selection of pubs had a lot to do with the geographic location, which as I mentioned earlier was a scant 150 feet from his front door.

As a drinker, think of the implications of that. You never have to drive drunk. Never risk a DWI, never god-forbid kill innocents, or yourself for that matter, as a result of an impaired state behind the wheel. This set up for Tom was nearly foolproof. Nearly I say, because on this night Tom was not to be spared, not to be saved by the "perk" of having a watering hole across the street from his home.

On the night he died, Tom drank alone, and I am sorry for that. Croc was tending, and Shelley and I were drinking. Croc, Shelly and I huddled in a group at the end of the bar closest to the front door. We were playing bar dice for much of the night, while Tom stayed at the other end of the bar. It never occurred to me to ask Tom to play along with us. I am sorry for that as well. I can imagine now how he may have felt, alone. Upon reflection he appeared as almost a ghostly figure as his gray hair shimmered in the dim light of the bar. He had less than an hour to live at this point.

As the time of his death drew closer, Tom drank a couple of pints of tap beer. He looked lost in his own thoughts, even a little confused at some point. I learned later that this date of his death, was in fact also the date of his birth. Maybe that was the reason for his puzzled countenance as he watched us from from his end of the bar. This was Tom's birthday. And he was drinking alone. No one to talk to, no one to share his day with. Just the three of us, and we acted like he wasn't even there. Of course, he never would be again.

When it was time for him to go, he walked down to "our" end of the bar and said to Shelley in a melancholy, and very child-like way, "It's my birthday. Can I have a birthday kiss." Shelley gave him a hug and a kiss and we all wished him a happy birthday, though we knew it had been anything but for Tom. Just how unhappy, we wouldn't find out about until the next morning.

Shelley called me the next day, and said, "Tom's dead." It did take a second to process this information, my brain struggling to escape a wicked hangover. Then it was like a kick in the gut. Tom left us, safely made it across the street and walked up the driveway to his front steps. Popular opinion is that when he reached the stairs to the front door he fell backwards and hit his head. The blow killed him.

We don't know if he lived for awhile after falling, but the visualization of this man lying on the floor, his life force bleeding from him with every beat of his heart disturbs me. While we sat and laughed and joked and rolled the dice, there was a man who needed help just a few feet away.

For what it's worth, if I could go back, Tom would have been rolling dice with us and laughing and joking. People like to say that when it's your time to go, it's your time to go. If this was in fact Tom's time to go, I wish we would have made him feel more like one of us, less like an outsider, celebrated his life with him if only for those couple of hours that he sat alone. His last hours, so alone.