Nearly two years have elapsed since the death of my friend Jim McLarty. Time, an indefatigable physician, has assuaged the pain of his untimely passing but it has not filled the emotional lacunae which the caretakers of memories often revisit. Tears evaporate in the desiccating demands of living: some recollections are better forgotten and others bear us up like a fine walking stick probing new paths on a mountain trail. It is illogical and ineffectual for us humans to rephrase that rhetorical question: Why? But we do. And maybe there is something efficacious about staring into the swirling face of the unknown and discovering the unnerving reflection of ourself, blurred, unresolved, still undefined in the terms we would have assumed would have been established long ago. Despite all of the entrapment of culture we retain a certain plasticity, an instinctual flexibility not simply to survive but to improve, to embellish the alluring skeleton of life.
Hardly a week goes by that I am not reminded of my old friend, that I catch myself preparing to fire off a quick email to him about the topic of the day. I know better and were things returned to the way they were two years ago, the responses we would have provided each other would neither have altered the status quo nor reshaped the future despite our hope that it might forestall the ineluctable nature of our fate. Confessions rarely modify behavior however truthful our admissions or optimistic our outlook. Nevertheless, when introspection becomes self-indulgent, strays too long beside a pool of darkness, I will search out the faces of friends still shimmering with light and add to their promise my own: I will remember.
