Check, please

Sometimes I feel like I can’t do it. I can’t move from day to day, and then the day moves without me. The days move around me. They move over me.

I’m trapped in my new apartment, in a labyrinth of boxes of envelopes and notebooks that I have no use for, but can’t throw out. The phone rang earlier – it was Jack, checking in after a week. I had thought he had broken up with me or something, but he just forgot to call. Too much marijuana in his younger days, I think. I pinged him by e-mail to check on him. Told him to call and check on his sister. She is dying, slowly. Cancer. Everywhere.

This is the Irish Check Chain. Check on your mother. Check on your sister. Check on your Auntie. Jewish people have it, too, but their Check Chain is specifically geared toward calling. (“Call your mother!”) The Irish Check Chain is much more dysfunctional, in that you can check on someone without that person even knowing it and still get credit. You mostly get points with God; however, if you can prove at a later time that you were in fact checking on someone (sometimes called “asking after”), you can still score big with that person, all the close friends, and immediate relatives.

Anyway, I’ve been looking over old e-mail exchanges between me and Jack, back when I called him Mighty Pelvis and Professor and all that squishy love stuff. He lives far, far away, so I don’t get to see him much. But we check on each other often, even though he is German. I have no idea how he holds it together from day to day, sounding cheerful and business-like, when I know for a fact that he is depressed and “circling the pit,” as he calls it. His baby sister is dying a painful death, right in front of him. He called me twice to tell me that she was gasping for air.

I hung up from him and called Marc. We chatted.

“Hey, Jack is depressed,” I heard myself say suddenly.

“As depressed as *I* get,” I elaborated. “As depressed as you get, too.”

That ought to ring a few alarms, I thought. Maybe we want to *do* something? We can’t let him in our club! That would totally suck!

Marc didn’t say anything. He won the lottery a few days ago, so maybe he was waiting for the penny to drop on whatever my point was. I’m not sure what my point was, though, or what Marc and I could have done.

Over the years, Marc and I have checked on each other a couple of times. I've checked on strangers and had strangers check on me. It's weird, but you know when you have to do it. It's a good and right thing to do, and I am grateful for the Check Chain, even when I resent it. I’m not sure if the Check Chain applies in this case, though, or if it’s even the kind of thing you can do if your alarm doesn't go off. You have to play it by heart. Go with your gut. Listen to your Irish.

I’ll check on Jack tomorrow. Points or no points, the alarm has been sounded. All the way from Germany.