Tommie Eidelman by Jerry King

Tommie Eidelman was a boy I never really liked. His Mom and Dad were overbearing about his baseball skills, and the fact that he played ahead of our son Thomas didn’t make it any easier to swallow. Tommie himself always seemed cocky and a little snarky, unpleasant in a mild but slightly offensive way.

And then I ran into Tommie and his Dad at Steak & Shake. I saw his Dad at a booth as we entered, and he and I both nodded our heads at each other in that manner that we use when we recognize someone, but we’re not sure exactly who it is. As I sat there thinking about who it was, I realized that it was Mr. Eidelman, and that the young man with him was probably Tommie.

So, as they stood up and approached the counter to pay, I called out “Tom”, and the young man turned. I would not have recognized him if he had not been with his father, but sure enough, it was Tommie. Except that the smile he gave me in response to my greeting didn’t seem like the Tommie I remembered. “Hi, I’m Tom King’s Dad, how are you doing?” And so we began a short conversation, which his Dad shortly joined. “How’s Thomas doing?” Tommie asked, and we talked for a bit. He volunteered that he was married, had a daughter, and then it came out that the little one was only 8 weeks old. So, I congratulated the father, and then I asked the question that turned the conversation on its ear.

“Is this your first grandchild?” I asked David (he had reminded me of his first name), and he hesitated, which alerted me immediately that the moment had changed. The next thing he said was “Well, it’s a little complicated”, and Tommie inserted “Dad, yes, it’s your first grandchild”, but David was too far into the situation to let it go. He said “Tom’s first grandchild (he was nervous, and of course meant to say first child) was a boy who died at 15 months”. Wow. Tom (no longer Tommie now that I knew he had suffered the worst thing that a man could suffer) still maintained the smile, and it wasn’t forced. This young man had changed in ways that I couldn’t imagine, and somehow it came clear to me that he had grown through that death and suffering. How could I know all that from such a short conversation at a fast-food restaurant?

As soon as they were out the door, I texted our Tom and asked if he knew about Tom Eidelman losing a child. He responded immediately that he did, and he would call me later to talk about it. Later that day, I ran into a neighbor who knows the Eidelman family. It was as bad as I could imagine. The boy died of SIDS. The mother is a physician. How could that happen? How could he put one foot in front of another, much less smile at relative strangers and really care about how their son was doing, with a smile, a real smile, on his face? I want to know more. I want to write Tommie (I can’t help it; he’s still Tommie to me) and tell him how much I admire him for bearing that pain and moving on, but do I have that right? Do I really believe that anything I say can be of any comfort, and am I being presumptuous to think that I have anything to say to someone in that situation? Enough to say that meeting Tommie Eidelman and his father David at Steak & Shake altered my world for at least a day.