Hey everyone!
There’s a book signing in Richmond this Sunday, (if you’re in town, PLEASE swing on by!), a delightful article in Style Weekly about Cities on a Hill, and this radio interview on the Jeff Katz show, WRVA 1140 AM
Me, me, me….
But anytime I get off track, living in that “room full of mirrors” (all I could see was me - Jimi Hendrix), something smashes it, leaving “the whole world for me to see.”
In this case, it was a text from Irene’s daughter, about a half hour before I went on the air at WRVA.
“Here’s mom’s funeral details.”
That fixed it.
Irene
Ohhh, Irene. (Her poem is on page 168 of Cities, and was one of the residents of “Statler Place” in the book.) How we all loved her. She was so brave during the lockdowns, a quiet light, and unbeatable at video bowling when things opened up.
She was always so quiet. She told me the story in a hushed, hesitating voice about how when she was a girl, she fell into a snowbank over her head on the way home from school. She couldn’t get out, and couldn’t yell, so waited for her mother to find her. Talk about patience.
Irene went on to lead a brilliant life, raise a family, travel internationally for business and pleasure, hosted foreign dignitaries, loved cats, and spent her last days brightening mine, and the other folks in her community.
Inflation
During the lockdown, we caused an inflationary crisis before it was cool with bingo bucks.
We played bingo every day, with mad prizes, and more.
“Oh, gave everyone five bucks just for coming to the event.”
I’d scratch my head, stressed as a new boss thinking of how mad management would be if the cash-flush residents started using the “general store” (with real merchandise counted to the penny), priced for pre-Josh times. Then I’d chuckle to myself, relaxing. Whatever.
Management rarely opened the store, and weren’t keen on my request to stock a snack cart. But, a family member slipped me a generous donation, and Wal-Mart was right up the street. Problem solved.
That snack cart rocked.
Oh, the trips to the store to stock it, the excitement in quarantine, the rummaging, the joy of the ice cream truck and the Normal visiting those sad, lonely halls. Residents would use their bingo bucks to buy stuff.
Irene was good at bingo. She saved up $250 in paper money.
My favorite memory of Irene is the quiet glow on her face after she bought snacks for the whole floor one Wednesday off the cart.
“Pick out anything you’d like.”
Moving
“There are horses when I’m moving, Irene” I said one day. She made me a puzzle as a parting gift. She’d build them like a painter, mount them, and gift them. Five horses wade across a jigsaw stream, framed over my couch in the country.
Artistic skill runs in the family. Another prized possession is the cigar box diorama her daughter made of my “office”, each item on the desk or on the wall a nod to something important, something about the time, bingo and bowling and cards and coffee–thoughtfulness, distilled in miniatures. It’s stunning.
I saw Irene a few times when I went back to visit. Her smile would ignite mine. I knew she’d have to leave. Everyone does. But it’s always sad. Being around people living and people dying takes the surprise out of it, but never the sting.
We’ll all miss her.
I’m watching an interview with Jim Caviezel. He told Mel Gibson before they made The Passion of the Christ (and were nervous about moving forward with the project) that “you have to carry your cross, or it’ll crush you.”
I’m so sad that Irene is gone. I’ll miss her Halloween costumes and her affection for bingo and her quiet way of building puzzles.
But the echo of her lives on. The way she’d do these “everyday things” is the glue that holds the world together. I’d be staggered by the weight of the times, but Irene would make the good choice to not throw things, and do something to make the world a tiny bit better. The “little things”, done in the face of the big things, become the standard for how to be.
And that’s dazzling.
Thank you, Irene.
Now it’s up to us to carry on your example. We’ll do our best.
Josh