A Life Completed — or three
“Just like that, here we are,” said the son of the deceased.
We were standing in a parking lot, reminiscing about events stretching back fifty or more years. The memorial celebration was over, chairs and tables stored away, guests and caterer departed. No reason to hang around and every reason not to go.
The deceased, Lee, with his wife Lou, had been a significant part of my life for more than five decades. Their son’s observation, “just like that,” named the dismay I’d been feeling but hadn’t been able to put in words. A life completed. For me, three lives completed. And with those three lives, an era was finished. Like a snap of the fingers.
I met Lee when his wife Lou, who I barely knew at the time, arranged a blind date for us. We were living on Vashon Island, in Puget Sound. When Lou learned that I commuted to Tacoma every Wednesday evening for choir rehearsal, she declared, “You can carpool with my husband.” Lee was attending evening classes at Tacoma Community College. Carpooling would lower our ferry costs. It also meant having supper together at a little restaurant near the ferry dock.
The restaurant was renowned for its clam chowder, which Lee and I both ordered. When the bowls were placed before us, Lee reached for the condiment tray and, with unbridled gusto, poured tabasco sauce into the creamy white chowder. When I gasped, he looked at me quizzically.
“T-t-t-basco in CLAM CHOWDER?!” I remarked. (Ah, but I neglected to mention. Lee and Lou were immigrants to the Northwest. Their native country was Texas.) Lee shrugged and gave me a pitying look. He’d often feel called to do so through the coming decades of friendship. These days people use the dismissive, “Get a life.” Lee was too kind for that. He’d silently resort to a disbelieving shake of his head. Either I didn’t get it, or he didn’t get me.
As years flew by, Lou, Lee and I grew close. Their four kids honored me with the sobriquet “Aunt Mary.” Lee and I would never see eye-to-eye on issues that weren’t worth discussing anyway, like religion and politics. That freed us to focus on what did matter: the Three B’s — Blues and Bluegrass music and Barbecue.
Then, when some real spice showed up in my life — namely a newspaper editor from a rural, eastern Washington town — I wondered how the newcomer would fit in. I needn’t have. John wore cowboy boots when the occasion warranted, and he owned a respectable collection of firearms. That was all the character reference Lee required.
Though we lived miles apart over the years, we four managed to rendezvous pretty much wherever Lee’s work took them — as far one time as Pusan, Korea. Always there was good music and something spicy. I learned to love Korean kimchee but couldn’t quite embrace the deep-fried dill pickles of Biloxi, Miss. And there was the day Lee paid John the ultimate compliment: letting him drive Lee’s cherished, classic Corvette on the wide-open roads of Texas.
When John died in 2007, Lee and Lou came to offer comfort. When Lou died three years ago, I was at her bedside. At the end of July I drove to Portland to be with Lee as he lay dying. We did something we’d never done through all those years. We held hands.
I returned to Portland for Lee’s memorial Sept. 9. The Corvette was parked front and center for the occasion. His daughter started it up and gunned the engine in a roaring farewell.
I feel like the survivor in one of those fabled agreements, where the last person alive gets the dust-covered bottle of fine wine. Only for me, it’s a bottle of tabasco, which I’ll be sprinkling on my clam chowder.