Getting old consumes time . The geezer has been shamefully derelict in keeping this story going, He apologizes, but he can’t promise a change of behavior. Old men move slowly. There won’t be a post every week. You may lose patience with the geezer. The geezer may lose patience with himself. We’ll deal with it.
On the other hand, it’s autumn, that most ripe of seasons. Days are gorgeous. Nights are cool. Skies are clear. The debilitating heat of summer is gone. The discomforts of winter are yet to come. The season makes a geezer happy. Its circumstances damned near break his heart.
Two close friends within a few days of each other drop dead, bam, bam. One friendship goes back close to seven decades. The other was still sinking roots. Both of them leave empty places. The places ache. A history terminates. Roots are torn up. Cherish your friendships, friends. You don’t realize how much they mean to you until they start disappearing.
Jim
The geezer’s buddy of his roaring youth was Jim. Back there in the past, close to seven decades ago, the geezer-to-be walks into a classroom and there sits a guy who could have been kin. Both about the same size, same coloring, same line of jaw and wicked grin. You know how it is, young men, young women, in that most vibrant time of life. You have so much coming at you, a whole different gender to figure out and even more yourself to figure out. And everywhere, in every drop of blood, there’s sex. So much. You need a running mate, somebody to partner with in the planning and the concocting and the picking ups and the trying to figure what it all means. Jim and the young geezer became a team. It was great. Jim had a genius for having fun. The two of them laughed and roared down the sidewalks of Manhattan. They both had a taste for adventure. Both had been to sea. Both of them came ashore in New York to seek their fortunes and chase amazement and girls and create memories to carry to their graves. In time, of course they both moved on, Both of them got married and sired kids. When the musical chairs finally stopped, the two of them ended up twenty miles apart.
It was good to have this old buddy nearby. They’d lost touch for a spell. There was so much new stuff needing to be done. It was middle age now, the time when a man’s insufficiencies start blindsiding him. Anxieties and conflicts and discontents crawl out of the woodwork. Each of them saw the other through a divorce and into a new marriage. Each became estranged from a child. They tended each other’s sorrows. They helped each other grow old.
Both of them became unsafe on the highways. Both of them got grounded. It became difficult to see each other then to communicate at all. Then Jim died.
He was the last friend of the geezer’s youth. The gap he left can’t be filled. The geezer would have to become young again.
Anthony
Anthony and the geezer had been street friends for maybe a decade. You know, you say good morning and you exchange names and bits of conversation and in time some information as to who you are. Turned out that Anthony was a retired MD now serving as pro bono physician at a neighborhood hospice. He also did rounds at a tent community underneath a freeway. Anthony liked to talk but also he liked to listen. Once a week he cooked breakfast at the hospice, and sometimes the geezer hung out with him in the kitchen and shared the table. They both had tales to tell. Anthony came from a family of bootleggers in the Colorado badlands. Then Prohibition got repealed and there went the market. The military provided a way out and sent him to medical school. He served in Viet Nam. He didn’t talk about it.
The plague put an end to the breakfasts. It put an end to a lot of socializing. Anthony took it seriously. He put the hospice on lockdown, which lasted until the vaccines came and then the spring weather. Now he sat on the garden bench, soaking it all in. The geezer rambled by walking the dog. The two men picked it up where they’d left off. It was good to talk again. This day they got to talking about their souls.
Anthony was a practicing Catholic. The geezer over his lifetime had checked out a few religions but found none he was willing to trust with his soul. It was good to have a friend who’d taken that leap and appeared to have landed OK. The geezer was wanting to hear the tale.
But the tale never came. Anthony died. The geezer is asking, What can be made of this? Something with promise is snatched away. He finds nothing. Possibly he doesn't want to.
In Anthony’s wake are a lot of people who’d become dependent on him, for medical care, for spiritual companionship, for plain old friendship. He left many gaps.
it’s good to have your friends still around. It feeds your soul. It’s good to have lodging for them back where you stash memories. It’s good to hang out with them. In the flesh when possible. In memory when not. It helps the brew stay rich.
In the geezer’s gallery of regrets, the most painful are the ones where he failed to act. He’s been reluctant to go out of his way. Think back, my geezers. Think about what each regret means to you and how much more each one can mean if you relive it. Think of all the slights and differences you can choose to ignore into forgiveness. Think about what has made you and your others laugh.
The geezer goes to Jim’s funeral. It’s a small Episcopal church out in the country. There’s a photo there of Jim in his old vitality. The geezer’s spirits rise to see it. It’s the Jim he knew. We’re sending his soul on its way. In his heart the geezer is saying, Go well, old buddy. He feels Jim’s hand on his shoulder. Then he’s gone.
The geezer comes away with a different point of view. The autumn light falls across his spirit. It might not be so bad, this dying, Loneliness might stop feeling so damned painful. Who knows? You may be changing your shape. You may need to be alone to get it done.
The geezer finds himself clinging to life not quite so greedily. He’s had a lot of it, more than his share. Maybe it’s best just to let it go its way. Best to keep the senses open and the imagination and the heart and to dig whatever he can. One day of course he’ll tumble off the edge, but he would have had it, life in all its richness. What can he say but Thanks?
Such a poignant reminder for all of us that the only constant is change and we should never waste our lives waiting for the "right moment," or to take anything for granted...