A Man's Strength

How do we measure what makes us strong?

As I have talked about previously, we’re big folks. Mostly tall, in my brother and my cases, but in Sean’s case also just plain big! And of course, you’d expect someone who’s 6’4”+ and 300 lbs.+ to be strong. But you might not expect the guy who weighs 100 lbs. less than that and in the middle of going through a pretty catastrophic weight loss to be just as strong, if not stronger. Sean had been bigger than me weight wise for several years. When he hit his growth spurt the lack of legitimate physical activity coupled with a diet of almost exclusively macaroni and cheese, chicken nuggets, and pizza helped him gain a ton of weight really quickly. But even though he’d been “bigger” than me for some time, he never felt the urge to challenge me. Until I lost about 40 lbs. and was wasting away to nothing while battling my defective esophagus and waiting to find out what was wrong with me and get fixed. We were messing around and roughhousing a little at the kids’ house when he got the bright idea that since I was so physically deteriorated now would be the time to take me down! I don’t guess he had paid attention when I told everyone all I did was drink protein shakes and lift weights every day. I might starve to death, but I was going to be the most jacked corpse in the morgue! It also didn’t help that his strategy was to jump on my back and squish me. As I didn’t even buckle a little under his weight, I calmly explained to him that I still squat over 300 lbs. and this was a bad plan on his part, because now his feet were off the ground and he had no leverage. I reached around and got my arm hooked around his waist and rolled him over in front of me where I could get him in a hold from behind, and I wrapped my long arms around his big barrel chest, grabbed my right wrist with my left hand, and started to squeeze. Like a boa constrictor, the more he moved and squirmed, the tighter I squeezed, until I had pressed all of the air out of his lungs and he collapsed to the floor gasping. Then, wheezing, he finally tapped out. He’d still try to catch me unsuspecting and wrestle me down after that…usually he’d try to get me when I only had socks on standing on a linoleum floor where I wouldn’t be able to get traction, he could be clever sometimes…but it would always end with him on the floor and me squeezing the air out of him.

God he was strong though! I never actually admitted it to him, but he was way stronger than me. I just happen to be a better wrestler. And to all of his friends, he was that gigantic strong kid. He would pick them up and carry them around. He-Man lift them as they called it. He’d pick Abby up and carry her on his shoulder. He was just massive. And he used that size and that strength to defend and protect his friends. I have found saved messages where some friends of his had problems with other kids picking on them or being mean or doing otherwise awful things to each other, and almost without fail just the threat of Sean stepping in to do something about it was enough to end it all. “Anyone who says violence isn’t the answer isn’t asking the right question” is a motto of mine I’ve half-jokingly told the kids, but at the same time the threat of violence can be a majorly dissuading force against otherwise bad behavior. And Sean understood how to utilize his size and strength to dissuade bad behavior that was directed at his friend group. A huge teddy bear, a gentle giant, but also a force that no one wanted to reckon with.

Strength is measured in a lot of ways. Just being physically imposing and able to lift heavy things is probably one of the more common metrics most people associate with strength, but that’s merely a surface-level measure. Strength is also mental and emotional. Having a strong mind being able to see, understand, and work through all of the crazy situations life throws at you. Having a strong will to keep pushing through. Being stable and steady and reliable. A lot of people have told me over the last couple of months how strong I am. And of course I give a little pained grin and say “thank you,” but when most days I still go through stretches of uncontrollable crying, when I go hide out behind the building to cry while I’m at work almost nightly, and then leave work early some nights because just holding it together through a whole shift is more than I’ve got in me for the night… I don’t feel very strong. I didn’t think speaking at Sean’s funeral was “strong,” I just thought it was what I needed to do, as his father, to make sure he got a proper sendoff. I don’t think writing about all of this stuff is “strong,” this is just what I need to do to get all of these thoughts out of my head and off of my chest…because if I don’t I’ll go crazy or they’ll crush me. I saw a quote, and now I can’t remember who it was attributed to (actually, I’m pretty sure it’s been attributed to a number of different people in different iterations), that effectively said “courage is not the absence of fear, but the choice to move forward anyway.” Maybe that’s how strength works too. Maybe it’s not the feeling strong that makes it so, but the just pushing forward and doing it anyway.

Sean knew he was a strong kid physically, but he was also shy and had a lot of insecurities. I doubt he would have acknowledged that he was strong in any way other than being able to He-Man lift his friends and be a symbol of brute force to dissuade bullies. What we’ve learned from all of his friends since he was taken away from us all way too soon, is that he wasn’t just a big body. He was an emotional rock. He brought comfort and support and encouragement. He truly was the best of us…even if he never knew it or would have believed it. He embodied strength in every way that it mattered for everyone who was closest to him. And that’s the most important strength a man can have.