People die. I know a lot of them. Knew. Relatives. Friends. Others. No secret. It happens as one grows older. What about those who were alive to you all your life and then you discover they aren’t, discover they died years ago, all that time you assumed they were still alive. Somehow that’s even more of a shock than a sudden death.
My father’s death was sudden, although for years his ailments forecast it, so it really wasn’t sudden at all. One day he was here. The next day he wasn’t. But, this wasn’t really sudden, was it? It just seemed like it.
Sometimes, when my mind wanders, I wonder about those from my past with whom I was once close. Are they well? Have they had good lives? It’d be nice to check in after all the years. A surprise. A call from the blue. Someone answers. You know that voice. “Who? My God, how in the world have you been?” That’s the way it often is. Really nice. Really fun, only once, it wasn’t.
It’s been fifty-six years. I was a social worker in the city of Baltimore. So was she. A very, very smart woman. Strawberry blonde hair. A lithe body kept trim by swimming. A lovely, warm smile. Some freckles. An easy laugh, more like a chuckle or a chortle. Sweet. She thought I was funny. And, again, very, very smart.
I was Jewish, a graduate of Morgan State College, an HBCU, where I was the only white guy matriculating at the time. She was Episcopalian, a University of Maryland graduate whose great great great aunt was an honest to God Revolutionary War heroine.You’d know her name. Her family didn’t want me anywhere near. I’d hear feet running from the living room up the steps to the second floor when I was at the front door. We dated for months, yet I never met one of them. But, she was tough, certain of her own mind, so, while it bothered her, we only spoke of it once. I’m sure she was the first Daughter of the American Revolution to work as a social worker. She did not brook inequality.
We talked a lot and laughed a lot, but I was heading to graduate school at Yale, and she was heading to law school at University of Maryland. I don’t remember how, but we drifted, and then we weren’t there anymore. I thought of her from time to time - still do - and I wondered if she ever thought of me?
It wasn’t that long ago when I took it into my head to see what had become of her. I did the research and discovered she had become a highly regarded equal rights lawyer, especially women’s legal rights.There was a newspaper photo showing her standing at her desk, older, but still, but still...I thought she looked just great. More years went by until I took it into my head to call her. I did the research, found her firm’s phone number, found she was dead. Whoa. Dead? Dead. She had died years before. It was a shock because she had just died to me.
I wanted her to be alive. I wanted to swap tales of our lives. To laugh. Instead, it was a shock to the midsection, a shock to the heart kind of grief I hadn’t yet known. I was no longer in love with her - that passed half a century ago - it was more an uncommon sadness, a befuddlement. She was just here. Where had she gone? I wasn’t looking at an empty chair or a hollow place at the table. I wasn’t looking at anything, but I could see her clearly as she had been. It made me want to share the tales of our lives. Fifty-six years ago we talked about what we wanted to become. Now, I had become what we had talked about, and I wanted her to know it. I wanted her to know how it felt to hold my grandson’s hand. I wanted her to know of my marriage of forty years and to whom I was married. She’d have laughed and clapped her hands. I wanted her to know I became the writer I wanted to be. I wanted her to know that I’ve held onto those principles which brought me to social work in the first place. T’ain’t easy, MgGee, and there were times I wavered but recovered and tried to do my best. I wanted to email her pictures of my son and daughter, and tell the tale that brought them to us. I wanted to tell her tales of Hollywood, and I wanted to tell her I worked in the White House with George H. W. Wrote a documentary on the american wilderness for him. I wanted to tell her that, unlike actors, the President didn’t change a word.
There wouldn't have been time in a phone call to tell her all this, but some of it, and it would have been fun. Yet, there would have been no more phone calls had she been alive because this would be the one. It’s not that I miss her. Really, I don’t, but she’s tucked into a good place in my life at a good time in my life, and, like my garden, I tend my memories. I roam through my mental rolodex (that dates me, doesn’t it?), pluck out the good ones, give them a brisk watering. I try to hear voices, words said, even peculiar expressions. There is no sadness to this, no yearning, mostly huge smiles that hurt my face. Those times were, but these times are, and that’s where I am and will be for the next chunk of time, checkin’ out my world to see what’s comin’ ‘round my mountain next.
