Bruce and I rode the same wavelength through our first three years at college. We were still children. Adulthood found each of us soon enough. I lost touch with him after my second marriage in 1978. Up until then he had the uncanny ability to show up at various opportune moments. Once he suddenly appeared and announced that Steve -- another college chum -- was a manager at the Wendy's across the street from Greenville Tech. Who knew? He might as well have stated that he had the Virgin Woody in his trunk. I did not believe him, and yet however preposterous, it was true. Leave it to both Bruce and Steve to end up holding a mini-reunion in a fast-food restaurant.
And Bruce arrived out of nowhere as the only witness to our marriage. Both Bruce and the judge are gone now. We took no pictures that day, except in the parking lot of the courthouse -- that very same building where my wife works today, parking her car on the same spot. All we have as proof that the moment ever occurred is the paperwork. She and I can still go and stand on that same spot, feeling the same sun on our up-turned faces.
What happened to that third person? For years he was somewhere in East Texas with a woman and her two children. Twenty years came and went without a word. How he lived and what he did during those years was never a topic of conversation between us during our remaining time together. All I know is that Bruce was the same as he had always been, if somewhat more bedraggled and now missing a limb. Yet still living in the moment, living in the Now. I honestly cannot recall another person in my life who had the ability to do this throughout their entire lifetime. And being with him always carried me back, in some sense, to my own childhood.
Try as I might, it was only on rare occasions that Bruce and I had a serious conversation about anything. I exhausted myself in the process, but he was more than my match. He simply would have none of it. In earlier times our most memorable moments usually involved food and drink. Scabs. Lums. The Palms. Pizza -- double cheese, double chorizo -- and beer -- his call. The Aloha. "Pork-Man-U-Eye". I could no longer enjoy these with him, even if he had been my next-door neighbor. I could not find humor in anything, and he found it in everything. This seems to have puzzled him more than it did me. I think he thought that I had a sense of humor, but that I had had it surgically removed. Or, perhaps it was just my memory. Because he could remember the children that we once were, and I could not. Somewhere back in those formative years, amid all the play, the message coming at me from the adults was that life was Serious Business, and woe unto me if I screwed it up.
Even as a child I metastasized into a grown-up. Today I can feel some sympathy for his parents -- like my own self-centered and abusive -- yet who outlived their oldest son. No parent, however uninvolved or ineffectual, should have to suffer this fate. I don't know if Bruce could have understood this raw emotion in me. This remains the great mystery of our relationship. Backgrounds so similar, yet outcomes so apparently different. Can I now mix altruism with a dash of joy at finally doing what I want to do as well? I have always been too close to the situation to be objective about it. Bruce would have laughed at the idea -- not because it is absurd, or even illogical. In his own fashion, he would have looked at me and simply asked me to repeat the question. That which I must analyze he knew intuitively.
The option has always been there. What remains is a sense that, by whatever device, Bruce was able to live his life with almost no resentment, bitterness, or anger, and never took himself too seriously. Every contact I had with him since our re-acquaintance in November of 1998 was a gentle reminder to do the same. If there is one thing I can say for certain, it is that life with Bruce was fun. The pleasure of just being alive and together. I have no idea if he understood how rare that is. Because for him, it was as normal as breathing. It was being, truly, alive.
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Now I see the Carolina Wren flitting between feeder and deck. She takes a seed and wedges it into a knothole on the surface of the deck. She pecks with pointed beak, pounding the goodie out of the hull. Back and forth for hours -- days at a time. One of the smallest birds in the yard, yet with the loudest voice. She sits atop a deck post, bobbing her head up and down, taking command, fussing at the small terrier who drinks from her bowl on the porch.
I watch the pup too. Another small animal with an out-size voice. Eyes as bright as lit coals, they amaze me with their depth and brilliance. Every blown leaf, each darting squirrel, any noise from down the street captures her wonder, as she holds mine. The deck, the yard, and the world beyond go from gray to brown to green to blue each day, and then are refolded into darkness again each night. I have chores and tasks which bring purpose to my life and add texture and richness to the lives of others -- man, woman, child, and beast. As I observe, and as I serve, I sense that finally I may be getting it. This is life, and it is good -- right now.
Sounds like some good memories, Sam, a childhood lived in innocence, the way it should be. Sounds like Bruce was a true friend to the end.
ReplyDeleteI also like to watch the birds at a feeder in our backyard. We have a pair of red breasted house finches who are fearless among the grackels.
Bruce was a special person in my life, and I do miss him
ReplyDeleteI learned bird watching from my wife, who has been giving them food in four different backyards since 1978.
We have had (Eastern) bluebird boxes up all that time, and usually have two sets of babies each summer. How many generations is that over the years?
Then there are the hummingbirds, which she feeds both here and at our lake house. In addition, she turned my sister on to the joy of hummers when she and her husband moved to SC from CA in 2002. My sister has taken to the hobby and even teaches classes at a local community college now (bird photography).
Hi Sam, I'm with Patricia on this beautiful remembrance - it's so good to remember our true friends. It sounds like Bruce was one of those very few and extremely special people who live life without all the encumbrances that the rest of us carry along with us. I know how often I forget how wonderful life is and fail to see all my blessings. And like you, I can't imagine outliving any of my own children. I shudder to even think of it, but somehow I know that I would make it through it.
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