Early Eulogy

 "If people are going to say nice things about me I want to hear it. So, I had a living funeral," Morrie Schwartz told Mitch Albom, on a Tuesday.

So now it suddenly strikes me, which day would be more-right than another to tell someone what you think of them? Do we need wait until they're dead? And of all the persons I know, the one I think most often about, with his being ready for The End, or of having an appreciation for The Now, or of his enjoying that Now, yet still being ready to let go, now, is my old friend, The Man.

The Man is twelve years my senior. He has frequently impressed me, inspired me, encouraged me, supported me. Yes, there are times when he might have interfered and saved me from myself, but in his wisdom he knew I had to run most of my course alone, especially the forks in the road that I chose in his absence, without his consultation. And in those halcyon years of our friendship, over 40 years now, we had in our discussions coursed the globe, divined the heavens, plumbed the fathoms, and chewed the fat. But shooting the breeze never came lightly; we were instinctually too analytical merely to be mouthing words.

The Man is a consummate listener. He will recall the details, forgive the elisions, hear what you mean instead of what you say, and ask for more at all the right moments. No sense of judgment attends his listening, no sense of curtailment, but he will redirect you if the thread of sentences merits it, if the meaning needs more matter. Even in his narrative he will seek to include you, as in, "as you know", or if applicable, "you of course have been there, seen it, mentioned it before." He is a man who is instinctually empathetic. Friends flock to him. People phone him. People write. He has a cadre of companions as diverse as bumps on a log, each full of warts and foibles and interests and complexities, but each with a life that The Man is prepared to examine. His interest in others is a paramount modus operandi for him. People like to tell him their stories.

As I began typing this essay, it was by tapping on my iPad, in my car. A big black raven intruded. The huge size of it, as it landed on the slope of the hood and began scrabbling toward me, heading straight at my face, got my notice. Twice. The first awkward flutter and slip did not deter it, and the entirely black thing, all sharp-beaked and rake-clawed, took off with a flap, but landed again. Unerringly, beady eyed, it made straight toward me. ‘Something stuck on the wiper blade?’ I thought. Behind the clarity of the safety-glass, I was protected. But then the ominous thing suddenly lifted off and away, in a dark flapping of beating feathers, all the while garbling loudly at the indifferent sky.

What does one make of that? What omen could it be? Ha! ‘Nevermore,’ quoth the raven. And it struck me, at which point will we all be ‘nevermore’?

The thing is, the measure of a man is in the moment. Now. I can relate The Man's history, now, tell you exactly who he is, but the point of this missive is to reach out to him, and to you, with the immediacy of the moment. When I hear The Man's voice on the phone, or in person, or even when I receive some email from him, I know a sense of love. He would ask, "What's your sense of it? Of things? Of him? Of her? What's your sense?" It is my friend's favorite question.

In the moment of my seeing that big, black, menacing, surprising bird, doing what it does without meaning anything personally, I am struck by the fact that as much as anything or anyone ever affects us, it is our own apprehension of the moment by moment, like mine of The Man, that counts. We react, or we respond.

The Man always chooses the latter. His life will resonate with me, as long as I'm alive.

Mayhap, so will the sound of that bird!