Pain! Dissatisfaction!! Resentment!!!

Complain:  To express feelings of pain (Check!), dissatisfaction (Check!!), or resentment (Check!! God, yes, Check!!).

I never heard Kenner complain about anything . . . that wasn't associated with the Government, which he complained about incessantly.  He just wouldn't do it.  One time he was volunteering with Habitat for Humanity when the upper support of the stairs leading to the basement - the stairs that he was descending suspended above a concrete floor - broke.  Ken road the beast to the ground, landing on his back on the now vertical edge of the stair.  After it fell ten feet or so, and stopped abruptly on the concrete.  He was probably 70 years old at that point.

Little Westside Jonny and I went to see him in the hospital that evening, and we left feeling better than when we arrived.  Ken was, admittedly, a little juiced on some kind of sedative, but he was as positive and funny as ever.  He eventually started laughing and then threw us out of the room.  I would have seized on that tragedy to complain for like ten years.  We couldn't get ten minutes out of Ken.

This was the jist of my communication with him.  No matter how bad it got - or how bad I made it sound, a lot more common - Ken always brought things around to the solution, and dwelling on the negative did not fit his definition of a solution.  It's not as if he was delusional, either, about difficulties - just balanced.  I have a new sponsor now that I'm in touch with every week - actually the guy that helped me kick things off 31 years ago - and I have a good relationship with him, a close bond, but it's never going to be the same as it was with someone who walked the walk with me for close to 25 years.

I still miss talking to him three years after his death.  We didn't have much of a social relationship until the very end when I came home to visit but it was a continuous, on-going one.  Ken listened well.  He talked some but he listened a lot more.  One connection we had over the years was at a twice yearly men's recovery retreat that we both attended.  These retreats were quiet affairs - there was a retreat master, usually a recovering Jesuit priest, who gave short talks, lots of meetings, meals together at long tables, plenty of time for walks on the peaceful grounds, and opportunities to sit and write or read or just reflect.  Often we'd sit together between presentations - talk a bit, maybe, but often just sit.

I'm sure he's up in heaven telling god how fucked up the federal government is.