Funeral for a friend.

'bye Teach. I'll miss you like a milkshake.


You get to a certain place, a certain point in the arc of your life, and unless you’re an idiot, you do some things better.

You’ve seen this and that once or twice before – different masks, same gremlins -- so you’re more apt to know a genuine crisis from a bug on the windshield. You know the difference between the buttery hum of a wee dram of good single-malt from skull-busting stupidification dog-water. You know how to tie a full-Windsor. You know how to be a good lover. You get comfortable wearing your own skin and don’t get too cranked over fire and boat drills.

I mean, how do you get a hard-on for the latest fad-rags when you've survived parachute pants ;-)

Those are the upsides.

One of the downsides is that some immaculate Saturday mornings your have to put on you church shoes, tie a neat, black full-Windsor, and go to the funeral of a friend.

Just one of those things, so you put a gloss on the Rockports, straighten up, remember the manners and hymns your mother taught you, and go be there for your friend.

Most of us have a teacher or two who saved our lives when we were little. The adult who, in my case, looked around conspiratorially, and pressed a not-exactly-authorized-for-my-age group copies of “The October Country” and “The Illustrated Man” and so forth into my hands and whispered, “I think you’ll like this.”

But the kinetic energy needed to bulldog us out of one orbit and into another – even marginally – grows as we do. There’s a gravity that comes with the sureties of years, and as beneficial it is to grow in ease and certainty, the escape velocity required for new ideas and new beliefs can also become very high.

It’s a trade and a balance. Balance of trade. Something like that.

I was lucky enough to have such a teacher/mentor/friend as an adult. One of those force-of-nature people.

To hear her eulogized today, you might have thought (if you were just passing by) that she was some kind of G-rated heroine; kind, loyal, god fearin’. There were a lot more words like that – words that maybe too often we associate with, well, not weakness, but with a certain goody-two-shoedness that implies that you won’t open up someone’s skull with a verbal snow-shovel if the situation calls for it.

Ha!

She was a broad, in the purest Sinatra sense. Honest and honorable. A smile measured in megawatts. Liked good wine and good martinis. And dancing. Held court like a pro. Knew every-fucking-body, and loved hooking her friends up with each other. And somewhere along the line someone taught her to cuss really well. Grabbed life by the fistful, as if friendship and the pleasures of living were her simple due, occasionally withheld from her like a lazy student trying to skate past completing a paper.

Uh-Uh. She wasn’t going to allow that, and sometimes just had to pick life up by the ankles and explain that you didn’t screw with some people.

She deployed all of those skills to teach.

She had had breast cancer for a long time. She had all the surgery and the chemo -- got right up in its face, fought it like a Berserker, rallied, faltered, and then died last week.

There were a few of us there that knew each other, and we did what you do; Told stories, comforted each other and talked smack about the people who weren’t there :-)

As long as things like gay-bashing aren’t on the menu, I’m mostly fine with church. I know most of the songs, and when to say “Amen”. People who stood and eulogized were applauded, which I didn’t know people did. The chapel has a decent AV setup and they did a slide-show with a sound-track, which I didn’t know people did either.

Church, when it invites me to sit in quiet contemplation, and listen to music and tales, is when I like it best. When there is an occasion where the power of the group and the music and our shared thoughts are palpably more powerful than the simple sum of those present. When something undeniably bigger than all of us is invoked and bears us up. It gave me a chance to think about my friend without interruption, and in the company of people doing the same.

Please resist any temptation that leans towards “I’m sorry.” Baby, never forget that we all have to take that long last walk someday, and she took her's with class and grace.

I’m lucky that she passed my way; whether that had anything to do with anything divine – whether “the divine” even exists outside our imagination – isn’t knowable. And its really not important. Communion with great souls and kind hearts is either holy per se, or such a fine simulation of what holiness should be that specific proofs are not required.

Then a long drive back, 70’s hits on the radio, with planned detours for work, dinner and drinks with a friend. It was going to be a long and rather sad day, and I had already mentally projected myself right past the afternoon and was busily worrying myself mentally into the evening when I hit the Michigan Avenue bridge on Lake Shore Drive. This is where the Chicago River joins with the lake, and during the boating season the bridges up and down the river are balletically raised periodically like an ultra-slow-motion kick-line to allow the taller vessels through.

That’s what the blog post picture is: just after noon on this sparkly summer day, they raised the bridge and brought traffic to a stop. A really long stop too. This big, stone hand just imposed its itself on the busiest street in the busiest city for a thousand miles in any direction, at a few ticks after noon on a busy summer Saturday and told us all, like it or not, busy or not, we were all just going calm the fuck down and relax now.

After awhile people started getting out of their cars and seeing what’s what, plus I have to figure out that anything weird gong on with a lot of people and traffic is going to trigger at least a little, subliminal terrorist fear. And I bopped along to my radio, and took a few pix, and then the thought came to be, “What would my friend have done?” I thought about it seriously for a minute, wondering what might she actually DO, and what I might actually do if she were here and I wanted to crack us both up a bit...

...so I got out of my car and danced :-)

Just for a few seconds and not well – trust me, me dancing is not a pretty sight – but a little Zorba-on-the-beach. Danced in the middle Michigan Avenue in the middle of the day, in the middle of Saturday traffic.

Now how many people have done that and live to tell the tale?

Then we were rolling again, and life resumed its forward motion at its original speed, but because of the day and the company, the memories and the music, the reflective pause and the bit of dance, I was a just the littlest iota different and and happier than I had been when I rolled out of bed this morning.

I think, as a teacher, she would have been delighted.

And I think, as a friend, she would have said, well shit Driftglass honey, as long as you're up, how about bringing this old lady another martini. And tell the bartender not to be so fucking stingy with the Ketel One this time.