The Catastrophe

By Wm. L. Maranda

The screams came quick, out of nowhere, maddening, loud shrieks of inner-pronounced pain, with “NO, NO, God help me, NO” staggered in between.

The screams wouldn’t stop. The pleas to the Savior rang of true desperation.

Then she started talking gibberish and crying, with the crying turning her words into an awkward muffled stutter.

“God help me, NO, NO, Please God help me, NO not this, not my precious little one”.

We all turned around in our chairs, as our workstations are interconnected cubicles. Most sat at our desks in wonderment of what could possibly be so devastatingly wrong. A few stood up to peer over the cubical walls, then they would bend over to whisper what they thought was happening.

Apparently, a call had come into the front office for her, to upper management. That’s the only plausible reason why Ron, the know-it-all-do-nothing was on the floor. It was something about her child, the middle one in high school. The one she’s so proud of and always bragging about; good grades for college, the first one in the large extended family to do so; she helps around the house so much, with her siblings and disabled grandmother; church volunteer work and such.

Momma’s lit’l gal. Momma’s precious little one.

I met the kid once. She was delivering some treats for our office party. She was tiny, so, so tiny. I mistook her as a ten-year old. But then her mother was a small person, too.

The phrase “I just don’t know what I’d do without her” became her mother’s repetitive trademark. She never had to post bond for a ‘child’, like some of the others in the office, the one’s that’ll then swear, “He ain’t in no gang!”

Something had happened to the little girl at school. The word “police” was peppered throughout, along with “child”, “innocent” and “senseless”.

And the most prominent of those metropolitan phrases, the one spoken so often it feels almost out of context regardless of the topic because it is always in reference to someone else, “wrong place - wrong time”.

As her supervisor laid a gentle hand on her shoulder, this welcomed but unexpected human connection startled her back into reality. She jumped up, ran towards the door, but her knees buckled, collapsing her, dumping her like a sandbag on the floor just yards away from her desk. Once again, the small group of co-workers bent down around her, to comfort her.

The group stood awestruck in the confused haze of the moment, with her supervisor kneeling down next to her. She began to emit small amounts of vomit. Her left arm twisted around her back in a contorted fashion, the thumb folded in, the fingers tight together and slightly stretched as if this one hand were held in prayer. This unconscious reaction from a true believer of the blessed redemption, as her right hand squeezed the leg of a desk so tightly the hand turned bright red, then blue. Two handsomely painted fake fingernails snapped off.

All the squirming caused her neatly stylish purple business suit to slide sideways up this petite human frame, the slip and stockings unraveling. Vomit was now dribbling out her nose as well.

The now muffled screaming-crying coming from this amebic form would not end.

“God help me, God help me, NO, NO, NO, NO! Not my precious, lovely little one.’

“ No, Please NO, God Please NO, NO, NO!”

The stuttered crying turned to gurgling and her short curly hair moped up the vomit in a swooping motion as her small frame shook uncontrollably on the floor.

She just wanted to die, to have an everlasting peace from this spontaneous haunting of a nightmare come to life.

There are times when a human is enveloped in such effervescent joy or catastrophic pain that all of Mankind seems to evaporate. This creates a dreamlike state of consciousness that can wall-out every type of pleasure or pain, whether mental, physical, real or imaginary, placing one in a vacuum where normal time and place have no relevance.

This is the inner ‘time and place’ were one is held captive with his superior being in whole, with his maker in entirety, however that might be. And it is not necessarily a place on this Earth as much as it is a place within the universal being of one’s self.

These moments of emotional reflection are what construct ones Life.

These moments establish the foundation of Life, which is the Soul. This is the arena where one is truly one and only, on Earth and in the Universe, with the superior being one either accepts or rejects in full.

Eventually Security called for an ambulance, and she was gone.

We never saw her again.

Let’s face it; ‘Time’ does not exist

After a few days the subject was customarily dropped. This is work after all; it’s all business here. We don’t have time to consume people’s personal problems. In the insurance business you see the endless suffering of the animated customers in the descriptions the doctors write on the claim forms all day long.

To placate an underwriter, when the sales guy needs a rate reduction for a client business’s medical program, he will jokingly state in the most comical fashion, “The sick guy died”.

This is supposed to make the underwriter more willing to give a price rate reduction because the exorbitant bills of the ill human that once worked for this small family business are all done with.

We can’t really blame him, though. Its just part of the job. Sales people are inherently friendly and jovial, always in good spirits. How else could they show up for work each day when you only sell to one out of twelve companies that you visit?

Terms like “leather skinned” and “callous” come from years of abusive clients.

And let’s face it. Nobody likes an insurance salesman.

Clement Stone, founder of what is now Aon Corporation, wrote a book about “Positive Mental Attitude” as the tried and true sales methodology. Learn to accept abuse and rejection and you could be rich, too!

This happy-face insurance salesman is counter balanced by the underwriters and actuaries. These bean counters are the ones that make sure there is money in the bank to pay the claims and maintain profitability.

Salesmen get paid on commission, so they aren’t much concerned what happens to the balance sheet once the paycheck is in hand. Underwriters and actuaries get decent salaries, but this ‘steady’ income is often complemented by a bonus when they create a profitable block of business. That’s why they keep an eye on the purse strings.

This positive attitude of the sales force and the stoicism of the bean counters establish the checks and balances that keep the insurance company profitable, for the most important of all bean counters, the stockholders.

But what happened to our friend, and her little girl? Can you find an answer in the Soul of a corporation? Perhaps, it is in the stockholder’s dividend?

That ‘sick guy’ might have worked at the factory for 28 years, doing a mind-numbing repetitive task. Now the owners, or shareholders, as the case may be, are somewhat please with his passing. They’ll get lower premium rates for the group medical plan. The ‘penny saved’ mentality that keeps the company growing strong.

A friend at work speaks lovingly of her joyful moments past, from time-to-time, as if she really did die that day. We all agree that she did bring in some of the best munchies for the potluck parties we held for birthdays and holidays. We also were fully aware that it was her daughter, Momma’s lit’l gal, Momma’s precious little one, that usually made us these delicious treats for us. Her mother worked this job as well as a part-time bookkeeper down the street at the factory next to their home, which didn’t leave much time to cook.

It was her litt’l gal that did most of the cooking. She also did the cleaning, taking care of grandma and the younger ones as well. And yet she still managed to get good grades. When you put this little kid’s workload into perspective, these were really great grades, and she did the tutoring for the younger ones, so that they might follow in her footsteps.

When you can’t see the outward beauty of one’s Soul, you can’t see the person either.

Let’s face it; her Soul did die that day.

I always figured someday, someone would tell us what happened to her daughter.