Hear Loneliness

Hear Loneliness

Gail D Prentice

Tom began his career as the janitor of Consolidated Logistics. He had no formal education, but grit, willingness to learn, integrity, and leadership were evident from day one. From the mere janitor, he moved to the forklift, unloading trucks. From there, he quickly graduated to Dock Forman. His ability to see problems before they caused problems was uncanny. His proficiency in organization and personnel placement came naturally to him. He had a sixth sense for what needed to happen before it was required.

After a short stint as Dock Forman, Tom moved into Shipping and Receiving. All freight, whether incoming or outgoing, was flawless. The products had never moved so quickly and error-free in the history of the company.

After three years there, he was again promoted to Dock Manager, with over one hundred fifty employees under him. Tom was not just liked but admired. He seemed to have the personality that won people’s hearts.

Tom was the go guy for everybody. He had the right answer for nearly every situation. It didn’t matter if it was an unhappy truck driver or the CEO of the company. It appeared everyone wanted Tom’s input.

Next on Tom’s promotion was being appointed Vice President of Logistics, as he chose to call it. Tom wasn’t fond of the Chief Logistics Officer (CLO) title. This role was his playhouse. He excelled above all expectations. His humble beginning with the company and his travels up the corporate chain had prepared him with the ability to understand how the company worked from the bottom up. He was amazed at how little CEO Layton knew about his own company.

Yes, Mr. Layton owned the company and made all final decisions, but he did not understand any part of the struggles of the workers who were lower than the Dock Manager. All he understood was upper management and money.

The money he had down pat. If the finances could not support his luxury lifestyle, it was always the hard-working people below management that was the problem. This is where Tom and CEO Layton locked horns regularly. However, Tom usually won.

Tom was later promoted to Chief Operating Officer (COO). That was a position that he disliked the most, but was most beneficial in. In this role, Tom oversaw overall operations and network performance. It was here that he would go toe to toe with Mr. Layton concerning financial decisions that would compromise the entire operation. Other companies that dealt with Tom would choose to deal with him over anybody else in the company. Even if it went against their wishes, they always saw the benefits of how it would be best for both companies to do as Tom suggested.

As the years passed, Tom became more and more respected in the company. The employees from the janitorial staff all the way up had the utmost respect and liking for him, but things were changing, and Tom did not understand it.

Tom found it harder and harder to deal with being left out of conversations. Left standing in a crowd of friends as a complete and total stranger. It was a very confusing time, and the struggle wasn’t getting better but was getting exponentially worse.

Tom used to be a pivotal person at every gathering, whether at work in any meeting or at family gatherings. Tom had it all together. It seemed like everything involved him in some way.

He found that he was not being spoken to at business meetings. At company parties, he stood by himself with his wife in silence most of the time. People would look at him, smile, and nod, then continue talking to other people.

Tom, a man of position within the company, well respected, well liked, and influential, was now left on the sidelines.

At meetings, the other managers held conversations with each other without him. Oh, they looked at him but did not include him. Even his family began to disengage from him. All this was taking place, and it hurt. It hurt a lot.

He noticed that he was separating himself from the meetings that he used to enjoy. He found himself not even wanting to engage in conversations. This was so unlike Tom. It wasn’t only with the company, but friends and family as well. It seemed that he was moving into a world of his own.

In the office, he was confronted once in a while as being disconnected from the rest of the company. He could see their position but did not understand why this transition was taking place.

The children, now adults, would stand on the other side of the room and talk with Mom, and did not include him… ever. This hurt more than anything he could have imagined. “How can they just ignore me?” was a regular thought until he would just dismiss it altogether. “What did I do to offend them so badly?” was another thought that often consumed them. Confusion and the greatest loneliness he could possess plagued him.

It wasn’t like the family was planning a surprise for him. It wasn’t that they were upset with him. They just ignored him. The loneliness was like a plague, and they avoided him even more.

It was the same in the company meetings. Even the other companies that he dealt with regularly avoided him. Decisions that he used to make were made by people under him, his secretary, or Mr. Layton himself. There was no explanation, just a curt smile, a handshake, or a light slap on the back. Seldom was there a conversation.

Loneliness and depression, as hated as they were, became the only friends and family Tom had left. The pain of that didn’t offer relief. It was just a constant that he had learned to live with. He didn’t like it, but it was his life now.

Tom, now retired from the company, had nothing to do with his time. One particular Thursday, Tom went shopping with his wife, Wendy. As they entered a discount shopping conglomerate store, he noticed a free hearing test station. He told Wendy that she could just go do some shopping and he’d catch up with her in a bit. She smiled and moved her lips in agreement.

Tom walked into the area where the hearing test was stationed and talked to the young lady attending the desk. After a few minutes of chatting, she put Tom in the soundproof room and began testing his hearing. When the test was complete, he came out. They sat and visited some more.

She fitted him with some trial hearing aids and told him to go find his wife. As he was leaving the station, he turned and asked, “Is it always this noisy here?”

She smiled, nodded, and said, “You are going to hear things that you haven’t heard in years, Mr. Tom. You are going to be amazed.”

Tom walked off into the depths of the store. He turned around in circles regularly. The sounds that he heard were amazing. He could hear conversations of people twenty feet away and understand every word. He could hear the sound of the cash registers. The sounds of the shopping carts and the stockers' carts rattled and clunked along.

He turned one corner, and he heard Wendy shout, “I’m over here, Tom.”

He walked to her and said, “You didn’t have to shout.”

The look on her face was confusion. She had raised her voice a bit, but she never shouted.

“I had my ears tested at that booth,” Tom began, “I did not realize I had lost so much of my hearing. I can hear things that I don’t think I have ever heard before. If I had, I had forgotten all about them.”

“Oh, Honey…,” Wendy started.

“Not so loud,” Tom stated as he held his hand up. “I know that you are used to talking like that for me to hear, but…” he paused, “WOW! I had no idea.”

Wendy held her hand up for Tom to stay there. She walked about ten feet away and asked her husband in a softer-than-normal voice, “What did we have for supper last night?”

“Ham and beans, with cornbread,” Tom answered instantly.

Tears flowed down Wendy’s face. She came back to him, hugged him, and apologized, crying on his shoulder. “I had no idea that you were not hearing us. We thought that you were just bored with everything and didn’t care about much anymore. Especially after you retired.”

Tom, also with tears, poured out his heart, “Oh, it was just the opposite, I thought you were the ones bored with me being home all the time now. I thought that you were so accustomed to me being gone so much that you had little to say to me.”

Though loneliness and anger had plagued him for several years, it seemed that there was a change in the wind. Hearing aids were now in his immediate future, as were restored friendships and relationships.