2/19
Cara is here for her first official day as
porter. Work that much need to be done.
And of course Eldridge wanting his round trip
to the doctor and no I don’t need to see the leg.
Still no lights under the scaffolding.
I decide to go visit my old friend Jack. I
call. His phone is disconnected. I feel a sense of panic. Call Rudy who I know
goes to visit him, too. Rudy knows nothing, offers to visit tomorrow. I tell
him I’m going now. When I get to the
Aurora, they tell me, Oh, he died last Wednesday. And then when they see the
look on my face, they apologize and send for his social worker. Who tells me
she’s not allowed to tell me anything but will tell the family I was there.
I feel a sense of shock and of deep and
profound sadness. Both at how I will miss him and my sadness that I didn’t get
to see him in those last days. Any of
those days I felt moved to see him would have gotten me there. At the bus stop,
I’m feeling cold and wet and alone.
Jack was an amazing man. A jazz
musician. A college dean. A playwright. And after his first stroke he
turned to poetry and after his next one, minimalist poetry. He used his speech impairment as an
instrument. He was a photographer whose photo of a poem on his hand graced our
city buses for awhile as part of their poetry in motion series. He was like the
black knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail who as each limb gets cut off, keeps on coming. When
my oldest son Micah was in high school, he was his writing coach. And one time
put Micah into a poem he’d written. His
Men’s Spirituality and Writing group reawakened my writing. It was a safe space
for exploration and growth. Conflicts from other parts of church life were set
aside at these meetings. Later, we moved to his apartment for our meetings as
mobility became more difficult. Even after death and other falling aways ended our group, I still continued to
visit him. During the West-Park fight to come back, he knew instinctively what we were
trying to do here and kept pushing, supporting and congratulating. He
desperately wanted to come back to church, but that was just not possible. I
wanted to do a celebration of his life
here, including his jazz. His very unique old recordings. Not to be. He held on to life at every
minute, taking it as it could be. During
my lowest moments last summer, his apartment with the late afternoon sun was a
safe house for me. I will miss him
beyond words, although he’d try and make me find the right ones.
You can't ever put off that visit, that phone call, that good bye....
I’ve got some research to do here….
Some of Jack's music from the 1940's....
No comments:
Post a Comment