I knew this day would come

RIP, Jimmy Scullin

My friend Michael, when he was my age (on the brink of 80) had a condition that might kill him. He chose, uncharacteristically, to write a daily blog. He’s a private man, a man who showed his scholarship and work, not his inner workings. This intimation of old age and death, though, opened a window into the questing soul behind his public façade. He started writing about “his dead” who often came to him, to companion him.

At that time, not too long ago, my dead were buried deep in my mind. I didn’t want visitations, because all but one were behind webs of regrets I did not want to break lest a black widow spider would awaken.

Gateway to old age

Now I am on the brink of 80, and one of the dearest people I’ve known, Jimmy Scullin, just died unexpectedly of a virus. With this death, I seem to be passing into the field between life and death called “old age,” into the time of a quickening pace of friends dying.

He still feels close, breathing into my ear. He has gone from being part of daily life to being one of “my dead.”

Coming to peace with my dead

In the last three years I’ve welcomed my other dead - mother, father, partner, friends - to come home again. I have done the hard work of truth telling, and the kind of one-sided forgiveness in which the other person no longer has a say in the matter. Forgiveness of myself and others is just part of my gait now as I walk through my days.

The news of Jimmy’s death spread through Facebook, the modern church bell that tolls when a soul rises to heaven. I could not believe my eyes. Why his picture and those words. I clicked through to mutual friends. Really! He died? How? When?

I wrote, also on Facebook, where the banns of marriage - and death - are now posted:

After you figure your way around Heaven a bit, meet Pope Francis and the rest of the welcoming committee, dear Jimmy, will you be our guardian angel? The over-lighting spirit of South Whidbey as you have been to all of us in your life? Actually, even if you humbly decline the job, we're all going to pretend you are somewhere nearby, and, when we feel a little snark or grump coming on, we'll remember the grasp of your hand, the warmth in your eyes and your generous help - and get back on the good-people pony and ride. I thought we would go into old age together, my friend, rocking in our chairs, not needing to say anything, evaporating slowly, but I guess we'll have to do that after I join you, wherever you are. I can't believe you're gone....

Milagro Beanfield War

The movie, directed by Robert Redford, opens with this scene.

Throughout the movie, these two old men, one among the living, one among the dead, talk and quarrel like oldest of friends do.

I wonder whether my dead will come to me in this way over time, come to some cantina in my mind where we can down a few tequilas and talk about old times. I wonder if we will be able to tell stories of those terrible moments when love and trust ruptured, and just rock back on our wooden chairs and laugh at what beautiful messes and small graces we made in our lives, and how beautiful, really, the mortal struggles we engaged in.

I need my dead

… whether or not they need me. I have no story about our relationship outside of my imagination. I will talk with Jimmy and imagine him squeezing my hand or chuckling and giving me some simple advice. Or maybe just say, “Seeya soon.”

We all need the wisdom of our dead, the humans who’ve lived through times like these. We are studying history now with vigor to learn how people got into - and out of - the messes of war, collapse, grift, and civic venom.

We all know that everyone who has ever lived has died or will die soon. We know it is our the fate for our thin cushion of ego wrapped around our borrowed flesh. Yet somehow we need the myopia of immortality to make it through our four score and seven… PLUS.

Coming of aging

…is that struggle with the mortality of the ego on the brink of old age and, ultimately, death. So much letting go. So much coming to terms with what is undone and done. So much forgiveness, mostly of myself. So much regret and acceptance. So much focus on what, if anything, can still be done.

And, once through this storm, once out beyond the barrier reefs, I’ve always imagined there can be some unimaginable freedom. I’m sticking close to Jimmy to have him show me the way. The woman in this film, from the same Reflections of Life videographers who came here nearly 3 years ago to film me, is who I want to be when I grow old - at 80 it seems - as I wrote earlier in this poem.