I had meant to post this later, but given my earlier note to you this morning I think it’s the right one for today after all. Food posting can wait.
A little while ago I posted a pair of poems memorializing our beloved friend Jim, one of them (Keyboard Position) honoring a fine teacher of his, whose graceful playing as accompanist to a vocal colleague, when I heard them, was so evocative of Jim’s that I was instantly flooded with remembrance–and a few fond tears–on recognizing the source of so much of his comportment at the piano: his posture on the bench, the curve of his hands, the distinctive action in his wrists and arms. The second poem (Nocturne) was more specifically about Jim’s playing and, especially, the powerful sense that his music lingers around us, as evidenced of course, in that earlier performance of his professor’s.
The Organ at Trinity Chapel, one of the many we heard Jim play so magnificently.
Some folk were understandably curious about the backstory of those poems. I’ll start with the “front-story”, if you will. It was a decidedly more recent performance of keyboard magic that brought all of these simmering memories bubbling so actively to the surface. I chronicled it in another poem, posted here slightly earlier. While my husband, as Interim Choirmaster of an Episcopal church, was preparing a pair of Lessons and Carols services in December with choir and strings and organ, the guest organist who had already been engaged for the occasion by my spouse’s predecessor arrived and began both rehearsing and endearing his charming, avuncular self to us. We had some foreknowledge of this guest, and were prepared to hear his spectacular playing, not least of all the amazing improvisational skills for which he gained much of his fame, so it wasn’t terribly shocking that hearing him play was so powerfully evocative of our late friend Jim, also a gifted organist and improvisational artist. What we weren’t prepared for was this dear guest organist Gerre Hancock’s death a few days ago. Needless to say, we are saddened by his loss but immensely grateful we had the chance to spend a little precious time with him and hear him play.
Jim commissioned some Bach portraits from me for a program we did together, music and readings and projected artworks, chronicling the life and work of Johann Sebastian Bach.
There are so many unfathomable mysteries in life and death. How is it that our paths in life cross with those of just these particular people at just these particular moments and have such unimaginable depth in just these particular ways?
I can’t begin to believe that it’s all coincidental or purposeless, most of all because I know how much I myself have gained from knowing all three of these magnificent keyboard artists. I am deeply glad that Jim’s beloved mentor and professor, subject of Keyboard Position, is still among us. He is a kind, gentle and wise spirit whose mere presence in the community still infuses us with the warmth of his long service as a fine educator and the depth of his skills at the keyboard. Gerre, though not so very old at his death, had a long and celebrated career and rich life.
Jim didn’t get so many years to accomplish any of this. He was murdered at 40 by a suicidal gunman. There can be no sense made of it at all. Like so many horrors in this world, it ought never to have happened. That it happened to a man my husband and I both considered an intimate friend as well as colleague, one who indeed played a part in bringing us together and then stood up as a member of our wedding party while also acting as organist and hymn-writer for it; who with his wife joined us on our honeymoon; who collaborated on projects with each of us at the university and elsewhere professionally and who celebrated together with my spouse when they both finished their doctorates–needless to say, his cruel death was earth-shaking.
But that is precisely how terrible things unfold in the real world, time and again. For some of us there are mercifully few such monstrous events, and for others they seem a constant deluge. One or a thousand, there is no pretty way to decorate such grief and darkness and make them logical and palatable, or even tolerable. So how to do we go on living?
Jim taught me the answer as much as anyone ever did. He had had his share of sorrows and trials in his own brief life, but he also managed to live one of the fullest and richest lives, in his 40 years, of any person I’ve ever known because his constant focus was on seeking, embodying, and passing around every form of goodness he could encompass. His almost limitless capacity for loving and sharing those gifts with others was clearly reflected in an enormous host of dearly loved friends, people whom he claimed as family and who took to heart his lessons of generosity, hospitality, inclusiveness, and determined hope. He created an army of sorts, and one more powerful in its quiet, almost stealthy, way than most, of people like me who, while we remember him every day with both love and loss, move forward through it more determined to embody some little part of the wisdom and patience he had at his best, the passion, persistence, and relentless efforts to better not only himself and his own considerable skills but the lives of the people around him.
Among the artworks Jim commissioned from me over the years were a series of lighthouse images because he was captivated by the idea of lighting the way for those in need.
So when I think of him, I don’t constantly revisit the hideous memory of his death and grief at the gaping wound left in this world by his loss–no good comes of lying deep in those fixed, implacable sorrows. I am moved to remember, to be immersed in, the deathless love of a friend and companion; his admiration for lighthouses, which for him symbolized the shedding of more important kinds of light than the mere incandescent; in the many graces he worked so hard to polish to excellence* and what they ought to do for the wider world; in his shouts of laughter at whatever deserved a good laugh; and most deeply, in those still fresh melodies that his magnificent musical gifts keep alive in the one simple medium that will outlive all of our astounding technologies for music-playing and listening: the heart.
Only in remembering to treasure the wealth of living that Jim wedged into his brief sojourn among us, and in living out the best of his legacy that I’m able to do, can I keep the joy that he was alive. By continuing to hear and be moved by–and move to–the music that Gerre and Jim both (and now, Anders) left eddying around us, whether from their instruments or from those lives lived with arms open wide and laughter ringing among the stars, I remember best how to keep living my own life.
Jim's memorial sculpture on the university campus where we'd all worked together was my final commission for our dear friend. This image, with commemorative text, is etched in glass and set in a steel frame, and the piece is called, simply, 'Excellence'*.
Art-Colored Glasses 
Firstly Kathryn can I saw how sorry I am about the death of your friend Jim. His way of going is particularly heartbreaking. It seems so unfathomable and whereas loss is loss I do feel knowing your friend was murdered adds to the burden of your grief. The words you write about him resonate with so much love. I hope very much that the act of writing them acted as balm (if only temporary) for your grieving soul. I am of course also sad to hear you are sorrowful following the death of your friend Gerre. Take care x
Thank you. You know how it is: the loss of a loved one (even, in Jim’s case, over a decade ago now) is softened over time to the manageable, but at a moment’s notice becomes fresh and new, as though it had just happened. Thankfully, the balance found in remembrance of the joys keeps us moving ahead and not stuck in the repetitive grief track. Jim would certainly approve of that. 🙂
I have no words, but I am reading yours and feeling them. I have sat staring at the screen trying to find a way to say what i feel but there are no words. Death is as sure to follow us as life is to lead us. Still too sad.. c
Thank you, my sweet. While the griefs in this post are mellowed by time (Jim died 11 years ago) and nature (Gerre lived a full life, if not to a tremendous age), I’m still aching for the Norwegian crew’s intensely untimely and sudden loss of Anders. Some things just can’t be understood at all.
What a magnificent memorial to your friend. It is simply exquisite. How blessed you were to have shared the time you had together.
You said it. We both feel incredibly blessed to have had Jim in our lives.
I’ve been back here a number of times, Kathryn, but I remain dumbfounded. The randomness. The utter waste. I hope you don’t fine this trite but in my mind’s ear I keep hearing James Taylor, “Shower the people you love with love Show them the way you feel…” Surely The Fates will come up with a better way to teach this lesson when it is time to do so again.
I am sorry, Kathryn, for the loss of your dear Friend,
I think the JT song is an unbeatable hymn to what we should all do whenever and however we can! (And I happen to like his stuff a whole lot anyway.) Death, disease and disaster of any kind are respecters of no one, and knowing that they can come at any moment ought at least to spur us to live more fully and more care-fully among our family and friends every minute that we’re allowed to do so. Thank you for your kindness, John.
Oh Kathryn, I am so sorry for your loss. I read an re-read your post thinking I had misunderstood it and I feel dumbfounded and at a loss for words. What a tragedy
As you so well know, it’s not only death that makes us grieve so intensely. I am all the more grateful that you were willing and able to go and help your parents through a very difficult time, Anyes. By reaching out that way, you have lessened the pain in the world more than you can know.
I like your point of view, in remembering these people for their lives, and not dwelling so much on their deaths. Very nice post.
It seems to me the only fair tribute *and* the only way that we can live fully and purposefully and happily in the present.
No words to express other than you have my condolences.
Thank you, dear lady.
To love someone – indeed, to even KNOW another person – is to risk loss.
When Angelface was born, Hubby was reluctant to even meet her…her parents mental shortcomings are well-known, and he was convinced that “Something Bad” was going to happen. He wanted to shield himself from the pain he was sure would follow.
How empty would he be if he had followed through?
Take joy in your memories, and let them carry you through the sadness…life without ever knowing them is a much bleaker prospect.
That is exactly it. I wouldn’t give up a second (even one of the less joyful ones) spent with those dear ones now gone. Mortality is a price we’ll all pay; immortality is only available to us in the enrichment we’ve shared in full community with each other, I think. Your little Angel Face is so blessed to be with you–and you, to have her there, despite the challenges.
What you recount here about Jim is strangely similar to an event in my life. I was born in Tacoma but lived there only for the first half year of my life. I grew up in New York, and Tacoma was just a name that followed me around on official forms but had no meaning for me. When I graduated from college and joined the Peace Corps, it turned out that one of the guys in my group had not only been born in Tacoma but had lived his whole life there: he was the first living connection to Tacoma I’d ever encountered. After the Peace Corps, I went back to New York and Tom (notice how i’s another three-letter name ending in -m) went back to Tacoma. He became a lawyer and I eventually returned to what I’d done in the Peace Corps, which was teach math.
About nine years after the Peace Corps I took the opportunity to visit Tom in Tacoma so I could finally see what that place looked like. We even went to Tacoma General Hospital and somehow managed to sneak into the long-closed old obstetrics wing so we could see the place where we’d been born just months apart from each other. A few years after that visit I was shocked to learn from another member of our Peace Corps group that Tom had been murdered. He’d been representing a woman in a a divorce, and the estranged husband was so resentful that he tracked down her lawyer, my friend Tom, and shot and killed him.
I think I know of the very friend of yours you describe, having seen those awful reports at the time as well. I’m sorry you had such an experience too. In a further twist, Jim’s widow had been widowed before by a lawyer named Tom; he, however, died of cancer. What a strange world of synchronicity. As horrible as the losses always are, I continue to think we are all better off for having known these truly dear and powerful people and had them change our lives.
I did some searching and found this, which mentions yet another Tom:
http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Shot-down-in-death-they-inspire-others-1081869.php
That was ten years ago already; I wonder how things stand today.
Kathryn, I am so sorry. Your drawings and words beautifully express his life and talent and your grief. It is so painful to losse someone so young an in such a horrific and senseless manner. Our family has lost a dear friend, 23 yrs old only, to a random murder. It was gruesome and it will haunt me always.
Geni, I’m so very sorry you’ve had that kind of terrible loss too. There’s nothing in the universe that can ‘fix’ it. The hole in the heart remains fresh forever. But I can see from your posts that you live very much in the present too, knowing that it’s the love that we pass on from those we’ve lost that will fill the empty spaces and make their lives continue to have meaning. Sending you many hugs.
Kathryn
I am so sorry to hear about this….. Send my condolences. I can feel the expressions on your drawings….
Thank you for your kind words, Nors.
I’m sorry for your loss. ‘Excellence’ is a wonderful tribute, so full of life.
“…lives lived with arms open wide and laughter ringing among the stars.” I love this line.
I suppose I could say that my friends wrote the line for me. 🙂
I am grateful that I was afforded the privilege of memorializing Jim in the sculpture; it was cathartic in a sense to offer these fond memories of him to the rest of his tremendous community of friends and family.
Thank you for your gracious words, Mark.
I don´t have the words to say what I feel, but I am thinking of you and wanted to say what a wonderful tribute to your friend this is. Dark days are followed by sunshine.
Indeed they are, Tanya. The lives of these friends were vivid demonstrations of light, so remembering them at their best will always bring light reflected back here.
Dearest Kathryn, I’m dumbstruck silent. The earth herself must shed tears for such a loss. my head bows, my heart aches in the deepest sympathy for what you, and still others, have lost in this beloved friend. I’m so very sorry.
I’m sure that you have known losses of your own, my dearest, and for each of us, each loss is the most painful we can imagine–and yet those that, like Jim’s, are tempered with the incredible legacy of their gifts–those become transformed into something useful and even joyful over time. Thank you for your sweet words. They are balm indeed.
This is so beautifully written and your artwork, especially “Excellence,” expresses the light and strength of Jim’s life. His loss is tragic, but you are right to remember him not for that, but the goodness his life brought to others.
I think that if and when we’re able, remembering and repeating their joys and graces does far more to honor the dead than continuous mourning. And Jim was certainly a joy!
I had no idea this would be the story behind the story… what a sad loss for our world, these artists represent the best of humanity.. even today as they live on in the memory and actions of the people who love them. I think he has an army that continues to grow.. because, through you, we are gifted with his presence. As you said above, we all go through grief in our life time, but most poignant are those that who were denied a longer life… how wonderful that in 40 years his life was filled with loved ones like you.
xo Barb
I have no words for a sorrow I feel for you and your husband, Kathryn.