Here Was a Man by Walter Bowne

Here Was a Man
By Walter Bowne
In Memory of my Grandfather, Richard Goldhahn
December 14, 2003

I hear you, above me, the gray tile absorbing
the two hundred pounds of black shoes.
The stairs groan underneath the weight.
(You always made the ground quiver)
The hint of Old Spice trickles over the banister,
That white bottle with the blue sailing ship,
Then it floods me with you.
I cannot smell cologne without becoming a child again,
My first whiff of masculinity.

It is past my bedtime but it doesn't matter.
Time is suspended here. As it always will be.
Here is the special place.
A sanctuary.
Consecrated. Holy.
You have been upstairs for an hour, and I have heard
The water running, the drone of the electric razor, the hum of the radio,
News radio wafting from the crack in your door.
In the cocoon of your room you metamorphosed from a pop-pop to a giant.
And now the giant makes his debut.

And from the floral sofa I stretch my neck to see you,
Knocking grandma's afghan to the floor.
And no matter how many times I witness the transformation,
I gaze in silent awe.

You smile at me, hold my check, and kiss me on the forehead.
You tell me to be a good boy for mom mom.

You were never shy with affection. Nor embarrassed.

Then you kiss mom-mom, and she leaves me on the sofa to see you out.
I hear the kitchen door creak open, and then slam shut.
How many times will I hear that same sound in my lifetime?
I hear the engine. Then I see the headlights. And then you're gone.

I know you have to leave. You're not like most men who wake up early.
You're a mysterious creature, nocturnal, elusive, who escapes while
The rest of the world tucks in for the night.

I want to be like him.
Polished, dapper, urbane, elegant, smooth, and viral.
I didn't know these words then. I only knew this.

Here was a man.

I want to be like him.

That was then.

Now he slips into the ignition
On a cold December morning
Before I can turn over the car.
I stare at the frosty windows.
My breath, white, the only sign of life,
hovers like an apparition
then evaporates into the darkness.
Just like him.
And there I gaze for a minute, maybe two,
Unaware that it's cold.
Or that I need to get to work.
For now I am warm thinking of him.

And I can hear him flirt with the waitress.
The purple one is his sex pill.
The yellow one is LSD.
And I hear grandma sigh.
Then I hear his stories about Bugsy Segal and Vegas, Michael Jackson's purchase of the Beatles catalog, the time he almost was thrown out of the army for insubordination, his days on the TV show, the SS All in Fun…
A thousand times these stories…
Even now he still recites them to me.
The stories. The stories. The stories.

Perhaps I am like him. I always wanted to be.

And I can see him wrapped in a blanket on the cold bleachers.
And I swear I can hear his thunderous voice stretch across the field,
Cheering me on.
Baseball, soccer, basketball, football.
They always were there.
Or there enough to make it seem like they were.

And I can hear his handclapping above the roar in the theatre
At the curtain call.
And I can feel his arms around me, congratulating me.

(I imagine it will always feel this way.)

I hear his car door slam as I rush to throw open the curtains,
Shouting, "Mom mom and pop pop are here!"
On a surprise visit.

It was the excitement of Santa without the gifts.

And I knew I was able to do so much
Because of the love I received,
But he wasn't there just for me.
He was present for all of us.
And what greater gift to bestow.
Than the gift of one's time.

But then the coldness of the morning
Seeps into my shoes. My life continues.
I crank the ignition of my car.
The heat from my breath poking a small hole in the frost.
The headlights stab the darkness.
As I need to move on.

And then it happens again later.
Memories that awaken in the oddest of places,
Hibernating in the dark corners, arise and stretch:

Squeezing the nozzle of the gummed-up toothpaste,
I see him swinging his arm as the steady pitcher.
Rubbing the chili from the bottom of the pan,
I hear the piano vibrating from the Casa Vechia.
Kissing my daughters goodnight after prayers,
I taste the pumpkin pie he wants to even off.
Lecturing on the structure of the Elizabethan sonnet,
I smell the mustiness of the cluttered music room.
Hanging up my jacket and tie,
I feel the burn of his whiskers, my hand tickles and I squirm.

And then it happens too. The concerned questions.
Mr. Bowne, "Are you all right?"
Walter, "Are you fine?"
Daddy, "Are you sad?"
Son, "And how are you?"

And then I answer, sometimes lying, "I'm fine."

And then I ask myself, "Are you fine?"

For I do not want memories serving as an anchor.
The memories should comfort like a gentle breeze,
Warm and soothing,
Oftentimes undetectable, pushing, never pulling.

Herein lies the dangers:
We can drown in memories.
Even the happiest of memories are treacherous.
The horizon succumbs to the waves,
The sun, the moon, the stars, pulled down from the weight
Of loss.
Today, tomorrow, condemned victims of the past.
We should not burden our pockets with the past
Nor condemn our lives with bodily reminders of the deceased.
Let us remember the music not the embers of the score.

And the second danger:
Nostalgia.
It wraps its charming chain
Around our necks, and we willingly march
Away in the musty history books,
In self-styled prisons where we hang
Like old photographs, dusty and graying,
Like the black and white pictures in photo albums,
Remembering, remembering, remembering.
But nostalgia kills those we love.
Nostalgia sucks the oxygen from the living,
The loving, those who are here today.
Do not go back to yesterday.

Regret is the third danger from loss.
It gnaws undetectably at night,
As we toss and turn,
The thing desired eats away at us:
The words that should have been spoken,
The actions that should have been taken,
The kiss that should have been given,
The hand that should have been touched.
Time that should have been spent.
Regret is elusive.
We see it but can never have it.
It is like trying to grab a cloud.
It is better for the clouds to evaporate,
To witness the stars and the heavens,
And be thankful for what you see.

And he allowed us to see. He permitted us to feel.
The vastness of the experience seems endless.
Through his example, we triumph.
In his memory, we prevail.

For I believe he wasn't so humble
That he did not wish to be seen as a paradigm,
A model for good living:
The prophet and never the disciple.
As if he held the key for a successful life.
One only needed to listen carefully, to see through unclouded eyes,
For the ingredients.

And this he said to me before he died,
With such soulful sincerity,
With the soft splinter of a voice,
My mouth forming the words for him, because I knew already,
His frail hand holding mine,
He said,
"Be a good husband. Be a good father. Have no regrets."

Those words will echo with me for a lifetime.
They will echo with my daughters and their children,
Encouraging us and inspiring us.
And if I am tempted to scream, "I want fame" and "I want fortune."
I need only to hear the ripples from his mouth
To know that the greatest riches comes from those we love.
It's that simple.

For family meant everything to him.
But who is our captain now?
We must be the captain of our own ships,
Of our own families,
As ships splinter from one to make many,
But the armada must not disperse.
For him, the family must remain strong, active, vital,
And together.

It is difficult to wrap your arms around such a complex man
Who wanted to appear simple.

To me he represented the fusion of the Romantic and the Classical;
The Romantic: the fiercely independent thinker, the man versus the world,
The artist, the storyteller, the piano player, the mixer, the rebel, the sexy cowboy riding the Hollywood range, the dashingly handsome man who looked like F. Scott Fitzgerald, the lover, the liberal, the
littered music room, the loving heart, the passion, the fanciful
imagination, the adventurer, the idealist, the subjectivity, and
the Questioner.
Then the Classical: the rage of his reason, the pragmatist, logical mind, the
mathematical progression of notes on the score, the devotion to the
markings of time of dates on cans and bottles and clothes and
hangers, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, the solid structure of his home
life, the frugality, the didacticism, the conservative, the sound
mind, the realist, objectivity, the simplicity, the restraint, the authority.

And there are so many stages of him that I will never know.
We each have an angle.
The teddy bear, the lion.
We each know this age and that age.
And taken together we never get the sum total.
For what is the measure of any man?

We should leave here tonight blessed with the love in the room,
For each other and for him.
Let us live unencumbered with excessive memory, nostalgia, and regret,
Grateful that we had the privilege for his influence, his dedication, and his commitment to all of us.
For many of us, he was our fountainhead.
For others, his waters washed your hands in friendship and loyalty.
Though his laughter, his smile, his warm heart and penetrating mind,
Let us carry on the tradition.
To his faithful devotion to his wife, Mickey McGarrigan,
Whose silent story must be just as complex,
Where I envision him dancing with her alongside a road in Heaven,
To "After the Loving",
Where he entertains the angels with one song after another,
Let us live to mirror the courage that he had to the end.

To have such courage, to stand on that precipice of forever, to gaze unflinchingly into the darkness and see the backlighting of a great life, whispering, "I have no regrets" is an enviable position we should all strive to emulate.

I told him there at the end that he was the greatest man I have ever known.

He smiled and mouthed "thank you."
Then I thanked him. As I will for the rest of my life.

As we all will.

Here was a man.