Crazy Old Soldier

I had forgotten how “good” he looked.  Everyone always said that.  “He looks so ‘good’ for 85.”  89.  93.  I always wondered what the hell that meant.  Did he look 82 when he was 87?  63 at 76?  Is that better?  What’s the difference?  But people always said it and I guess I agreed with them but to me he was just him.  He always looked that way.  Handsome and tall and distinguished and strong.  Even when he was immobile in his chair and struggling to breathe.  He looked good. 

The last time that I saw him alive he didn’t look good anymore.  He looked worse the very next time that I saw him.  You can imagine.  So that was my memory of him.  I’ll spare you the details.  But the image is vivid in my recollection.  The empty, broken vessel of a man who meant the world to me.  Gone.  And that was my memory.  A whole lot of lost for a non believer.  He was gone and he didn’t look good anymore.  The end.   

We made the arrangements to send that vessel off.  Grossly overpriced formalities.  She didn’t want anyone to see him that way.  To see that he didn’t look good anymore.  It was Her choice.  And so the box would be sealed and that final image would be lasting for all of us.  And so it goes.

And then She changed her mind, as She does.  She wanted to see him, good or otherwise.  It was her choice.  They prepared the vessel as instructed.  Heather gray trousers, classic black blazer, crisp white shirt and a red, black and white diagonally striped neck tie.  Teeth.  Glasses.  Black socks.  In his pocket two black and white wallet sized pictures of Her and him from way back and a more recent time when they both looked good.  The decoration was complete save for his iconic hearing aids and his gold wedding band which She put on Her middle finger as She was concerned about grave robbers.

I saw him first.  I’m never early but I was that day and I saw him first.  When I arrived the woman who had helped ready the vessel told me “He looks so ‘good’ for 93.”  Not a day over 75 she had said.  What’s the difference?  I drifted dreamlike to the open box and I saw him first.  My first thought was that he did look good.  For a dead person.  He didn’t look 75 or 93.  He was just dead.  Gone.  An empty put together vessel. 

It was then that I realized that this image and the previous image and the one before that were all the same.  They were memories.  But they weren’t THE memories.  THE memories had begun 32 years earlier.  He had more hair then though not much.  A bushy white beard.  He wore a sturdy watch and whittled wood.  He made with his big bare hands a cradle for a new born red headed girl.  He built and painted with intricate craftsmanship a rocking horse that he brought to her dressed as Santa Claus.  He held onto the back of her blue banana seat bicycle and ran behind her until she felt the balance inside and then he let go and she rode off.  He fixed that twisted mangled bike when she crashed it down a hill, after he carried her home and repaired her knees and elbows.  He nervously taught her to pilot and park his tiny white car with burgundy interior, then he gave her the keys so that she could pass her driving test with the automatic transmission.  He took her to swimming lessons and to tennis practice.  He sat through every band concert and school play.  He cleaned up her messes and cut up her food and took her to class and kissed her good night.  He was at her graduation.  Her wedding.  He came to visit her in college and she spent every single Christmas with him.  She danced with him and played cards with him and when she called home from far away he sang “Hello Dolly” to her over the telephone.  He had sung “Good Night Irene” to her when she was in that cradle.  Those were THE memories. 

And now he was dead.  He wasn’t 93 or 75.  Just dead.  And I had loved him as much as one can love.  But there was nothing to say and no one to say it to.  So I waited and when the others arrived I stood back and watched as they observed the vessel that had been he whom they loved and I wondered what their memories were as many stretched back twice as far as mine. 

And then I understood the point of all the expensive pomp and circumstance.  It wasn’t for him.  He was dead.  It was for us.  It was for his Wife and their three children and their eight children and their children and the people that had joined us and had loved and honored him as much as the rest.  Twenty three individuals who called themselves a family because he led the grand assembly.  Twenty three living beings who owed their very existence to a man who was now gone.  And we all came together that day for the very first time in complete unison in spite of our differences and disagreements and because of our respect and admiration so that we could each close this beautiful chapter of our respective memory books in a tribute to he who started it all.  He who made us us.

When we were all gathered and our memories satisfied She told us that it was time.  Overhead Johnny Cash and Ray Charles sang sweetly the tale of the “Crazy Old Soldier” and without a word twenty three people lined up quietly and one by one walked to the box that held the vessel and in turn closed our books.  Each man touched his stiff arm.  Each woman kissed his cold forehead.  She paused a moment longer than the rest and as She turned away, her hand, still soft and delicate in spite of her incredible strength and age, glided slowly across his empty chest and then the preparation man closed the book and sealed the box.

He left us on a Friday.  The books were closed the next Tuesday.  His battle is over and we fight on.   

“I’ve tried to forget her
and all the things that we’ve done
but as long as there are memories
I’ll never hang up my gun.”       

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