Rest

But the next day dawns clear, cold, and bright, and I wake at peace with things as they are. In an early bath, the unresolved questions of the previous day dissolve into acceptance, which is quickly commented upon by an imagined K., offering a wry observation that he will be rapidly forgotten, and that's just as it should be. He won't be, not now, but in time -- he's right -- we all are. Oddly, I realize that my youthful horror at such a thought has already given way and now includes the conviction that in thirty more years, at K.'s age, I will even find many aspects of death amusing.

That's the delight of relationships that span generations. The younger person gets to rub up against the kind of wisdom that only comes from long years lived with awareness, and the older person gets nudged -- or jolted, sometimes -- into activity and enthusiasm. It had been hard for K. to move from New York, where he spent much of his working life and felt most alive, to a gentleman's life in the country, closer to children but far from the cultural and intellectual life that had defined him. He made up for it with music (he was a singer and good keyboardist); teaching the occasional literature course for older adults; volunteering at the local homeless shelter and food pantry; accepting some leadership roles. He kept fit, played tennis, walked the dog, ate a healthy breakfast every morning (steel-cut oats and half a grapefruit), kept up on the news, and traveled as much as he and his wife could before her health began to force them into a smaller geographical radius. From the outside it might have looked like a graceful retirement, and I suppose it was, but his mind was such that he -- like me, I suppose, and that may have been our bond -- couldn't do anything without analyzing it, and so each change was accompanied by soul-searching, not only about himself but about the institutions that surrounded him, and by which he sometimes felt confined and uncomfortably identified. He often expressed a wish that he could go back to New York, and sparred once with my husband about our move to Montreal, later writing a note of apology, saying he realized that he was simply jealous.

His first health crisis was a heart attack. I remember walking into his hospital room the next day and finding him up in a chair, wearing a rather elegant dressing gown, looking quite chipper and pleased at himself for surviving. I'd brought him a book and didn't plan to stay, thinking a longer visit would tire him out, but he insisted that I sit down and talk for a while -- finally, he said, someone had come with whom he could have a real conversation about something other than medical details. He had had a strange experience of calm during the whole attack, and a vision of his material substance dissolving into the universe, or something like that; as with all profound experiences it was hard even for this very articulate person to find words to describe it. But whatever had happened, it took away a good deal of the fear of death. Later, when he suffered a severe infection from a knee replacement, he had another experience of nearly dying and coming back, drawn by the love of his family; I knew he was unafraid and at peace with the inevitable, because he had told me so.

---

In the late morning, I sit down again at the piano. This time I thumb through the Bach Partitas, and decide to play the last one, #6, with its fugal bookends of the first and final movements, the whole suite kept from heaviness by a thread of syncopation that runs through it. It's a good choice, far better as a remembrance and farewell for K. than the prelide and fugue I'd attempted the night before, and in the middle of the suite the sun -- nearly all the way into its winter trajectory - shoots an unexpected beam of light through the window and over the top of the piano. The music feels free, the errors forgiven.

I suppose I had hoped for some last word, or the chance to say a proper goodbye -- that's natural. We last saw each other at our going-away party at the end of July, when I had played a little Bach to show him our absent host's vintage Steinway that I often played, and later we stood talking on the deck, watching the sun go down over the Vermont hills. He was in good form that evening, in his usual tweed jacket, looking every bit the headmaster he had once been; cheerful and neither acerbic  or cynical - almost sweet.

Today, looking through old emails, I see that there really wasn't anything unfinished or unsaid, because ours wasn't that sort of conversation in the first place. We were just friends who sometimes picked things up where we'd left them off the last time, but were more likely to talk about the present: politics, films, books, life events. In these emails he was commiserating with me about downsizing my library, and trying to help me find people or organizations who might take them. He'd made a series of calls to try to arrange a contact, but underneath the practical help I knew that he knew that the move was exciting but also wrenching for me. The last email ends with a single word, intended to be uttered, I'm sure, in its French pronunciation: Courage.

Comments

[dale]

(o)

[Deb]

I've been reading and rereading your posts about the loss of K. They bring me to sweet tears, cognizant as I am of how quickly this could be/will be me, too. Yet I know this is really about the singularity of both you and he. That you and he together is what abides, even as it fades. And that is restful for us all.

Great wisdom and sweetness in these writings. Peace to you. And all of yours.

[Dick]

Beauty in sadness. You speak for all of us, Beth, who have lost friends in age. And, through this quiet threnody for K., they live again for a moment. In the sense of that brief immortality, may we be as fortunate as K. in the friends who survive us.

I wish you a peaceful and joyful Christmas and New Year, Beth.

[Kim]

I am moved, once again, Beth, to tears.

I believe what I cherish so much about your blog, and any small personal interaction we have, is that analytical bent you have, so much like my own, and your interest in things I value -- literature, music, friendship, connections.

Thank you so much for sharing this with us.

[Jan]

What a marvelous life. I so loved your postings. Thank you for sharing a special person and relationship. When these people touch our lives, they change who we are, living on within the depths of our own being. From the way you write, I don't suspect this memory will fade.

[Teresa]

Beth, these two most recent posts of yours are wonderfully full of love and relinquishment without regret. It is a comfort to read them.

Thank you.

Teresa