ritual

A Psalm of Life

/ C.B. Kent / 1 Comment

The older gentleman slowly lowered himself to the empty stool to my left. One of the younger women tending the griddle half-turned, her right hand still expertly flipping the pile of hash browns for an order, and gave him a huge grin. “Coffee?” she asked, and he nodded, returning the smile, dentures gleaming.

“You a local?” he asked me. I shook my head. “From Massachusetts.” He proceeded to ask specifically where, and it turned out he used to live a couple of towns over from where I now live. His eyes were probably not as bright as they used to be, but his voice, though a touch gravelly, was clear and resonant.

I turned to the corn muffin that had been placed in front of me, warm and lightly brown from the griddle and slathered with just the right amount of butter. I was about to take a bite when I felt a light tap on my upper arm.

“You see this?” He was holding a drawing of a barn, the lines so clear and precise I thought at first I was looking at a woodcut. “I drew this,” and a gnarled finger pointed to the name written in block letters in the left lower corner. At first I thought he was going to try to sell it to me, but with a slightly shaking hand he put it back to where it apparently lived, propped up on the corner of the counter. I asked him if he was an artist, and he chuckled, “No, I was a mechanical engineer. I picked up a book on how to draw and tried it.” He pointed to other drawings hung up in various places around the diner, his, and a few clearly made by children. I suddenly felt like I was eating at someone’s house for the first time, welcome yet unsure of the customs.

My breakfast of eggs, hash browns and bacon appeared before me and I tucked in. The woman behind the griddle, I think her name was Nancy, asked the gentleman if he wanted something to eat. “Can I make you whatever I want?” she asked mischievously. He declined, but she gently insisted. A lemon poppy-seed muffin was negotiated.

“She is a lovely woman, so charming. You should watch how she works, so fast, and everything comes out just right.” He wasn’t wrong. The tiny cooking area was just big enough for Nancy and the owner of the place, and side-by-side they produced orders, never getting each other’s way.

He tapped me on my arm again and with a smile intoned the following:

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
   Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
   And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
   And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
   Was not spoken of the soul.
He laughed and patted me on my arm. I laughed with him, because that’s what you do. His words were familiar but I couldn’t place them.
“That woman, she’s just lovely. And watch how fast she works!” He gestured a fast motion with his hands. There was a pause for a bit. A waitress poured more coffee in mugs that had the diner’s – the owner’s – name.

 

“After the War – I was in the Navy – they discharged me to the bottom of Texas. I said, ‘How am I supposed to get home from here?'” I assumed he meant Galveston but I wasn’t going to interrupt. He proceeded to tell me how he hitchhiked up to New Hampshire, given lifts by good samaritans all the way. One of them was apparently a woman in a Buick convertible. My mind’s eye saw a robin’s-egg-blue car, the woman wearing a kerchief that fluttered in the wind. He never said how long it took.
He turned towards me again.

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
   Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
   And things are not what they seem.
He emphasized the word “not” with his finger. When he got to the second verse, I listened more carefully, and wondered if in some small church around the corner he delivered sermons.
Life is real! Life is earnest! 
   And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
   Was not spoken of the soul.
And he laughed and patted me on the arm again. Was he trying to tell me something? As I scooped up the last of my eggs, I realized customers where stopping to say hello to him as they left the diner. They call people like him “fixtures”.
During a pause in orders, Nancy  leaned over the counter and said to him, unprompted,”You know you’re my favorite.” He laughed. A moment later he said, “You should watch how she works, so fast! And what a charming woman. Just lovely.”
There was a small mound of hash browns left on my plate and a few swigs of tepid coffee in my mug. Could I, would I, at an age when all I will remember are the stories but not what I had done the day previously, be a fixture in a place like this?
As I started to gather myself to leave, there was a third delivery of the poem, and just as the others, emphatically sincere. He laughed heartily, as if this were a riddle that I was meant to unravel.
I found the answer later, which like all riddles is always hidden in plain sight. He was a sailor, after all.
Lives of great men all remind us
   We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
   Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
   Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
   Seeing, shall take heart again.

Death and Vegas

/ C.B. Kent / Leave a comment

Perhaps the Sodom and Gomorrah nature of Vegas was why some of my thoughts and conversations this weekend revolved around life and death.

My friend and I were having breakfast one morning and the topic of death came up. Well, of burial, specifically. My mother has already pre-paid for her burial (grave, interment, casket, I think); she’ll be buried next to her mother. I’m sure the necessary paperwork is somewhere I’ll never find it when the time comes.  My understanding is that it’s better (read: more economical) to plan your/your loved ones burial well in advance. And once she’s buried there, and the house sold, the likelihood of me returning to that area will increasingly diminish as time passes. I’ve no love for Florida, and “paying my respects” is an interesting practice that I can’t seem to wrap my brain around. It’s not like the dead “know” you came to say hello (or cry, or shout, or curse or tell stories, or lay flowers or small stones). I realize the ritual is for the living, part of the mourning process for many. We place markers, also not for the dead but for the living; monuments, tributes, “I was here, once” your sign says to those who care to read it. You were here, once, and this is who you were: someone’s mother, daughter, you were loved, you were important to someone or some many someones enough for them to erect a stone for others to see. You Were Here. You Are Gone, Now.

Flying also brings about anxiety of a premature death, and the events of the past week, of the downing of the Malaysian airliner over the Ukraine, had me white knuckling the armrests every time the planes pitched and wobbled.  Reminds me it’s time to get my affairs in order.