I think of my dad and Ronnie, little boys in Bayonne, chasing the ball in the street, watching the boats arriving at the docks and the boats departing, watching the water wash ashore and then recede; two boys marveling with child-eyed wonder at life’s comings and goings. I think of them on cold days, all bundled up, ready for life’s elements, watching their breath in the air, visible life, learning what it means to be a friend. And I think of them this past weekend, two fathers sobbing in each other’s arms, remembering the day Jeremy was born, when his life became visible, when Ronnie’s hopes and dreams and most of all love were realized in a new life.
I think of this and the tears start to come. I’ve cried a lot these past few days, and I’ve hugged a lot too. I cry because someone I knew all my life, but never really took the time to know, is gone. I cry because someone who was loved by so many is no longer here. I cry because someone who knew how to love so well has left an emptiness in the lives of those who were close to him. Yet, if this past weekend taught me one thing, it is that in many ways Jeremy is still with us. When we hug each other, the embrace is Jeremy’s, and when we cry, the tears are his as well. The passing of a friend has a way of making us more human, more able to reach out to one another and show that we care, show that we need each other.
I try to balance the tears with laughter and memories, for life and its exaltations will always be more powerful than the moment it leaves us. Like anyone, I’m trying to understand, to figure what this means to my life, and to this earth, and the life that moves through it, blood in veins and water in rivers, blood in rivers and water in veins, in the roots that feed the tree, its branches and finally the leaf, which will one day fall to the earth only to grow again. I think of how at every moment somewhere the sun is setting and somewhere the sun is rising and the beauty is so intense and so constant it is overwhelming.
I take myself back to a forest in Africa, watching a waterfall and listening to the birds intone their melodies of what happens, as I sit trying to reconcile the purity of the moment with the image of bombs dropping from planes, assaulting what is natural and what is alive. I think about how we mass produce death, commodify it even, creating a simulacrum of suffering that makes us forget that death can never be defined, qualified or quantified. And then something like this happens, someone you know and care about dies, and you realize how acutely unique and precious each and every life is, and how to deny this fact is to deny our own humanity.
But most of all I think of Jeremy, Jeremy and his lifelong journey of inquiry and discovery, his tireless effort to understand himself and the world around him-the mysteries within both-and to reconcile life’s immense joy and beauty with its often unfathomable pain and suffering. And I think about the way he lived it, with a smile, a kindness, an exploring heart and mind.
My eyes start to water again as I look out the window at the clouds and ocean below. The scattered cumulus clouds cast shadows on the water. I think about the waves, rolling along, lost in the enormity of it all, passing in and out of the darkness, alone in the shadow or blinded by the light. I remember the Nick Drake lyric, “someday your ocean will find its shore,” and I hope with all my heart that Jeremy’s loving and his longing have found a home beyond the horizon.
