They Died

In March of 2020 my father died. While he was not well, I did not expect him to die. I certainly did not expect him to die that day. The talk of a virus was background noise to me even before his death, and seemed pale in comparison in the weeks after the death of my father. I recognized that day that the death of a parent is a life cycle event that happens normally. The normality of it does not help with the reality of it. As many who lost loved ones during that bizarre period would also realize, the Great Pandemic and the social restrictions only made the deaths a heavier burden without your normal means of support and grief. A cousin and childhood friend who came to the funeral told me that he had never felt more like a child than when his father died, an uncle I loved dearly. Those words resonated with me that day. Three weeks later my best friend Stevie died. I humbly am very lucky to have several people that I simultaneously call my best friend. Each of them will forgive me for saying that Stevie was the best friend any man could be fortunate to know. He was the epitome of friend. His regular catchphrase was emphatically and simply, “I’ll go.” Putting on your shoes? “I’ll go.” Surprise him when he didn’t expect you? “I’ll go.” Starting a sentence with words like, “We’re going to . . . “ and he would interrupt you with, “I’ll go.” For those who knew Stevie, and those who saw the life that Stevie and I shared through many Facebook posts, he was genuine. Once you knew what to look for, he showed you clearly if he liked you and just as clearly if he did not. He was passionate about several things including Cookie Monster, all white leather athletic shoes, Coca-Cola brand soft drinks, loud radio songs and rolled down car windows. These were external things, though, personality preferences. Others traits not as easy to see were his strength and resilience such as when faced with two spinal surgeries for spinal stenosis. Never a complaint, never an argument. The weeks of wearing braces in recovery he might not have understood but he trooped through it and never complained. He was beyond words, beyond adjectives and descriptors. * In the face of such death, I realized I had lived a charmed life. I was pretty old before I faced that sort of death. I know I was. I know many friends and family had faced it during younger years than I. I found it impossible in the days after to post anything on social media. I struggled with words to say that my father died, and continued to struggled through time to say that Stevie died. No words on a social media post could convey the loss. Silence was my words. Until the day Stevie was buried I would have told you that I had asked anyone who would be involved to make sure I was buried at Maple Hill in Helena, the old part of town, with beautiful old trees and rising monuments to rival any cemetery. The day he was buried we bought two plots as close to his as I could get. I don’t expect to know that I’m dead, but in living I expect to know I will be buried near him in a tiny town in West Tennessee. It’s within walking distance of the Tennessee River, and I think there’s some poetic peace to having been born in a Mississippi River town and to be buried in another river town. This may sound macabre, but there’s a bag of dirt from the yard of my childhood home and Eddie knows to bury me with it. A little bit of Helena there in the Tennessee grave. As I write this, I continue to second guess every word, every phrase. I’ve started similar posts a dozen times and never find words that are appropriate enough to say, “My Dad died” and “My Stevie died.” I suppose there would never be right words that are well enough to convey.