The Builder

Today I want to talk about a builder.

Paul Schaub lived in the periphery of my childhood.  Unlike my own father, who wrestled us on the living room floor, and unlike other men, such as my grandfather who shot pool, or baseball coaches who smacked grounders, or Sunday school teachers who taught me how to pray, Paul Schaub’s presence was less tangible.

 For one thing, he rarely spoke.  Secondly, he often worked.  Our schedules rarely meshed, and although many hours were carved out during long summer afternoons with his two sons—creek walking, three-wheeling, hog showing—Paul himself remained mostly out of sight.  He stood along the edges of our days like the shadow of a tight fence. 

Despite this distance, though, it did not surprise me at all to stand a solid two hours in line recently at his funeral visitation.  After all, Paul came from a large family, and he married into one just as big.  However, most of us waiting were unrelated.  We were there to show respect for a man much beloved, and to offer sympathy to a family much bereaved.  Although deep into his sixties, Paul worked at a much younger man’s pace.  Unfortunately, the cancer, uncovered just this spring, moved one clip quicker.

This column ought not be hagiography, though, because Paul was hardly the type who would want people reading about him in a newspaper.  Besides that, some of you might not even know who Paul Schaub is in the first place. 

  Instead, this brief column will be about the things we build in this life before moving onto the next.

I want to talk about building today because it seems there’s too much talk about everything else.  I want to talk just a little bit about building, about things that do last past us, because it seems that lately I have been reminded that we, ourselves, will not.

Maybe it’s too much news, the sullen thought that perhaps we are all soft targets anytime we leave our home.  Maybe it is the palatable tension, the eerie din of a union that seems to fray a little less perfect every time we walk into another day.

Or, maybe it’s just me turning 40, and after years and years of paying attention to the world around me, the invisible fairy dust of immortality, each and every speck, has finally all drifted beneath my feet.

Because someday, it turns out, we will die.

That’s not really the point, though, is it?  That is not news. 

We often get bent out of shape about the “how” of dying. Will it be painful?  Expensive?  Slow?  Short?  But we often forget that in the end we all basically end the same way.  We do end. 

The difference between us, then, what actually matters, and what we should concern ourselves with, is not dying at all, but how we spend our time before dying arrives.  What do we build with our lives before those lives end?

Despite all the bad news, and there is plenty to choose from, I can’t help but be hopeful about America, because in America, I think, we actually have many builders. 

Paul Schaub built things.  Paul left behind a metal dragon that actually spits fire when you put a token in it.  You see it every time you drive past Vandalia on Interstate 70.  He left behind two good sons, hard working men with families of their own.  He left behind brothers and a sister, a daughter, grandchildren, and perhaps the most God-fearing wife I have ever known.

He built that family.  He built those relationships. He built a reputation that anyone who knew him would be proud to make their own.

Paul Schaub built much in his sixty-seven years, and for that many of us are quite thankful.

But now let’s talk about us.  What have we built so far?  Much, much more importantly, what can we build this year?