Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

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Monday, May 3. 2010

Death of a buddy

Everything is as green as can be, and my Wisteria is coming into bloom. Yes, the big bridge is washed out but I am fairly sure it is getting fixed.


Entropy rules, but we do the best we can.



After church yesterday, Mrs. BD and I decided to do an inspection tour of our church cemetery. We noticed that the columbarium was in bad shape, and that some good friends had bought a nice modest granite stone for their plot. I hope they do not need it anytime soon. We also noticed that the grass is getting high and the dandelions and weeds are everywhere, but that's as it should be in a New England graveyard.


When I got home, I learned that one of my good tennis buddies had dropped dead last week, where he would have wanted to do it, on the tennis court. He had a slick, tricksy game, wonderful tennis exhuberance, and near-perfect technique: no flash, but steady as a rock. He was a professional wordsmith too.


Too soon, my friend, but that is the right way to depart. Now, nobody is left who is willing to give me those special sarcastic critiques of my flubbed shots.

Posted by Bird Dog in Our Essays, The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 09:21 | Comments (7) | Trackbacks (0)

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My condolences, Bird Dog, on the loss of your friend....
#1 g on 2010-05-03 10:10 (Reply)
I've always thought that if happiness had a "color", it would be spring green.
#2 brierrabbit3030 on 2010-05-03 10:32 (Reply)
Dang - sorry about losing your friend. My Dad died in similar fashion at the Beverly, MA Tennis Club in '76. He loved tennis, played it for many years and had a coronary playing the game he loved. When my brother and me went to clean out his desk at the Boston Hearld (he was Business Editor), we discovered a ton of photos of him in tennis gear, but one stood out - on the fantail of his DE somewhere in the North Atlantic during WWII hitting a tennis ball against the side of the rear deck 5 inch gun. :>)

If I go (I intend on living forever), I want it to be on the end of a big game rod with a monster marlin on the other end. :>)
#3 Tom Francis on 2010-05-03 11:07 (Reply)
When they say you lose a little piece of yourself when a close person dies, it's literally true --part of the "you" existed in that person now gone.

Sure knocks everything off balance.
#4 buddy larsen on 2010-05-03 12:57 (Reply)
so sorry to hear of your friend's death. my sincerest condolences. mp
#5 opie109 on 2010-05-03 16:09 (Reply)
Swinburne wrote it. My Dad used to quote it: "From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever Gods there be.
That no life lives forever,
That dead men rise up never,
That even the weariest river,
Winds somewhere safe to sea."

I used to think of this as brusque, and possibly cruel, But now I realize it has a rough, almost kindly realism about it, like Horatio at the Bridge: "But how can man die better, Than facing fearful odds, On the ashes of his fathers and the altars of his Gods."

Marianne.
#6 Marianne Matthews on 2010-05-03 23:15 (Reply)
Hey, was your friend Steve Maxwell? He was my next door neighbor 35 years ago in VA. Great guy. My mom went to his funeral.
#7 psota (Link) on 2010-05-18 01:42 (Reply)

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