Transitions

Alfredo (L) Me on (R)

Today is the last day at work for one of my best friends.   He is not so old, 53 I think.  Despite his relative youth, in the world of special agents and law enforcement personnel, a special deal is made.  They are allowed to retire with only 20 years of service.   This is largely because the years of long hours and professional stress are expected to take their toll on the body and cause many to die younger.   Being a civil service person but not an agent I need to have 30 years of service and be nearly 57 years of age before I can walk away.  In the overall scheme of things it is still a great deal.  This in a world where many people today wonder if they will ever be able to retire.  I think about this every time I see an elderly woman serving fast food at Chick-fila or an elderly man bagging groceries at the Publix.


When you think about it, we spend most of our lives working.  Over the years many of us spend more time with our co-workers than we ever do with our families.  When we finally reach the point that the balance can change our children are consumed by their own working lives.

Alfredo Arroyo

I first met Alfredo in 1995 when I moved with my wife to La Paz, Bolivia for a work assignment.  I could immediately tell he was different.  He seemed to set himself apart from the office yet often had a jovial attitude.  You see, in the working world in which I live most of the men are quite simple minded.  Many are filled with the bravado of being a Federal Agent and holding a shield that gives them power most people don't have.  They wear their weapon on their ankles and feel naked without it.  Many are staunchly conservative yet in truth they have no idea why.  Their focus is simply on "those liberal justices" they hate and the desire to put the scum away.  Over the course of a career, they become very jaded by the profession, very cynical. They seem to resent most of humanity.

Alfredo was never that way.  He was an intellectual and cared more about knowledge and learning than few people I have ever met.  His mind was filled with thoughts few in the office that would ever understand.  He was well traveled, spoke several languages and liked opera.  He appreciated art, logic, philosophy and the humanities.  He adored women so much so that he had been divorced at least four times.  I asked him once why did he keep getting married?  His answer, "they always seemed so happy when I asked."  During our time in Bolivia or O'blivia as we came to call it, Alfredo and I spent countless Sunday mornings sitting in cafe's puffing on a cigar and enjoying a cup of coffee.  When the world would overwhelm me I would visit him at his desk and he would always seem to have some carefully chosen words of wisdom that would calm me.  At the very least, I always felt like he understood.

You see, Alfredo was quick to recognize that I was much like him.  We were both loners and aliens in a profession that seemed uncomfortably at odds with our personalities.   We both had minds that seemed to thirst for something greater, something beyond ourselves.  I was one of the few people that Alfredo took into his personal life.  It was a world carefully guarded and kept at bay from the rest of those that surrounded him professionally.  At times he seemed to want to create an image larger than himself but the truth that I always wanted him to know was that I didn't care about that image, I only cared about him.  It was his very self that was the person that I liked.

Trinidad Bolivia

Alfredo and I spent days manning a post in a small Bolivian town on the steps of the Amazon called Trinidad.  It was the last vestige of a once thriving enforcement operation called Operation Snowcap where paramilitary minded agents ventured out from to storm airstrips and jungle cocaine laboratories.  By the time we arrived the program had ended, but our small base remained staffed by personnel from La Paz.  Alfredo and I would interview informants, meet with police, and generally pass the hot days postulating about what was and what could be.

During one trip to another Bolivian town named Santa Cruz I received a phone call from my mother.  She told me she was dying of cancer and had but a few months to live.  As can be imagined my emotions flowed out and tears streamed down my face.  Alfredo was with me, Alfredo gave me a hug and somewhere deep inside our friendship there was a bandage that seemed to wrap around the tears rushing from my soul.

There came a time in La Paz when Alfredo needed my help.  He had to have a kidney stone procedure done and I knew it was hard for him to ask.  Alfredo always had a hard time asking anyone for help.  I insisted on being there for him and assisted him.  This despite his prostrations that if catered to would have surely resulted in him being taken by a cab driver to a dark ally of La Paz and rolled for every dime he had to his name.

Overseas assignment have limits and eventually the time came when Alfredo had to return to the states.  When he left my world felt empty.  I made three of the best friends I have ever had in my life in Bolivia and losing Alfredo felt like a dagger in the heart.

Despite this separation we have kept in contact and met up a few times over the years.  I always miss him but he has largely been an email away.  At times I have felt his own emotions have grabbed a hold of him and he has faded for awhile.  This has led to personal frustration because were I closer, I might have forced my way into his life and pulled him from his inner demons yet the distance prevented it.

If this sounds like an obituary it is not.  You see, it is simply a transition.  Today Alfredo has chosen to retire from the agency that has been both of our homes for over 20 years now.  While it is largely mental, it is terribly sad for me knowing that he will no longer share the same professional existence I continue to maintain.  On the other hand I know that he must feel relieved.  Relieved to let go of one chapter in life with the freedom to focus on others.  I suppose I envy this freedom.  For twenty plus years we have been a member of the same club.  Now we will journey to a friendship free of the boundaries set by professional frustrations.  Free to focus on the mental enlightenment we have both always cherished.  The last time we tried to meet up the job got in the way.  Now for him at least, this is no longer a problem.

Ira Wald

With Alfredo's loss I have only one other close friend inside the agency.  Old man Ira Wald.  Ira should have retired 12 years ago.  Now at 67 years of age the one thing that drives him forward is the knowledge that his ex-wife isn't getting her hands on half his retirement. 

As my friends leave my working world I can't help but feel a little more lonely.  Stranded in my own mental isolation in an environment that doesn't really seem to understand me.  At least I know I still have a dear friend that is simply an email, a phone call or maybe a weekend flight away.

Alfredo wrote me and spoke of his contentment of letting the job go.  He said "For some reason I am thinking of Michaelangelo's "Creation."  The image of God with his arm extended towards Adam's who is reaching at him.  Origin and destiny.  I have walked the path from my origins and now prepare to fulfill my own destiny.  May my future be sweet."

From one intellectual agnostic to another I bid him farewell and I welcome him to a different life.