In April of 2007 I wrote about the tragic loss of longtime friend Jim McLarty; it hardly seems possible that it has been more than a year since I paid tribute to my friend. All of those who knew the None will never forget him. Those who were unfortunate enough not to cross paths with this rare, bundle of contradictions were deprived of delightful conversations on nearly any imaginable subject and, some of which, none of us could begin to imagine if we were granted two lifetimes to do so, all delivered with unmistakable and irrevocable pronouncements of authority, the signature, the sine qua non, of the irrepressible James Fulton McLarty.
While I reflect on and lament the loss of my dear friend and his premature passing, I am equally saddened that so many will never have the opportunity to know him personally. James has been memorialized and celebrated by family and friends from the Yankee north in Maine to the sweeping southern landscape of North Carolina, and sometime this year as well, in his beloved Rift Valley in Kenya–his ashes will enrich the soil on two continents as his living did our lives. His wife, Chris, provided me with this link that honors Jim’s commitment to conservation on the George River in Maine.
One question persists as one reflects on one’s life and it remains as steadfastly haunting as it is common among us humans: What will become of me? All religions have their own peculiar reply, but I find comfort in the reassurances of the human heart, the self contained metaphor of love, and the immortality that memory guarantees despite the inescapable mortality of its only source.
