2003-11-19 11:34 a.m.
Elegy

Dear Joe,

I went to your funeral today. A funeral I never expected to attend. Your wife held onto me in the doorway and cried into my shoulder and held my hand so very tight when I explained who I was and where I was from. Your wife, who I'd met only once, but felt like I knew because you talked about her every single day. I think she may have been touched that even the girls from the convenience store that you stopped into five times a day came to pay their respects to you. It was proof, of how much you really did touch people's lives. You touched mine, Joe. You worked fifteen hours a day, yet you still made time, time to say hello, to joke, to make sure everyone was having a good day, to make us all laugh, to share my cigarette break with me and tell your funny stories.

We will miss you at the store. We'll miss your jokes about Sabina, who lives across the street, who you called "Molasses" because she walked ever so slowly across the parking lot on her way to work in the morning. You used to joke that she had to leave her house at 4 to be to work by 6. We'll miss making you your four pieces of toast for breakfast, or a bagel (with three sixteenths of an inch of butter, of course). We'll miss you taking two cups of coffee, one to have right now, and one to stick in the freezer for later. We'll miss you telling us to go out to the truck to see Granddog because you dressed her up that day with a bandanna or something. We'll miss your Joe sense of humor.

I remember your kindness. I remember meeting that kid for the first time, that troubled-looking kid that you hired and took under your wing. You always introduced him as your "adopted grandson". You bought him breakfast and lunch every day. I remember the time that that girl came in the store, distraught, with tears in her eyes because she'd forgotten her purse in Connecticut with all her money in it and she was afraid she wouldn't make it home on the little gas she had left in her tank. You gave her twenty dollars and asked her if she'd like something to eat. You said that if that was your daughter or granddaughter, you'd want somebody to do the same for her. But I could tell that your soft heart wouldn't have let you turn your cheek and walk away, even if you didn't have a daughter or granddaughter. You always plowed the parking lot of Beth's hair salon across the street and wouldn't accept a dime or even a free haircut in return. You were a true gentleman. The best kind of man. My grief (puny as it must be in comparison to that of your wife, daughters, granddaughter, and other remaining family) at the news that a heart attack had taken you in your sleep was unbearable. Though now, a few days later, it has transformed. Into something that words cannot readily express, a mixture of relief, that you did not suffer, that if you had to die, the way you died was the most fitting...no pain, no suffering, for if ever there was a man who deserved death in a peaceful way, it was you; of resolve, to take the kindness you always showed to others and pass it on, as tribute to you; of acceptance, of course, and a reinforcement of the lesson that death teaches us, that people die so that others may live, really live, and not take life (or anything else) for granted. So that we may look around us, at the world we live in, and know wonder. So that we may feel the touch or the breath of a lover or a child or a stranger upon us and know love. So that we may look into our own hearts and know peace.

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