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tim!: Tribute
2003
Thee moone is impossibly bright tonight. Were me a werewolf, would I howl upon it. Hip hop goes to the soul. Listening to it is like wrapping your heart in butter and frying it on the stove. Later, service for four will eat your heart with cheap red wine and stimulating conversation.
My sink is mocking me as it sits on the guest bed. It has the right, not truly being a sink. If you follow the idea that function begets definition, that is. A sink needs a water supply to become fulfilled. If this is the case, I have been denying my sink its destiny for some time now. What do you need to become whole? How is your soul? On the other side lies a beach with another full moon. Each time I look upon the moon I think of standing on it. It is so bright I almost forget that it is not solely luminous, but is only acting as a giant reflective surface to show us the beauty of the sun. Interesting how the sun alone will burn your cornea or other eye part if you look upon it for more than 15 seconds. But its reflected radiation is cold light and dark light and is more beautiful than many things making themselves visible these days.
More on souls. So interesting and yet so elusive. I am truly a non religious person and yet I do not fear for the validity of my own existence. For lack of a better term I will say spiritual. The idea of death in this world of ours is not up for debate. More than this, it is shunned as voodoo. Personally speaking, I am interested in seeing the man behind the curtain. I have many questions still to ask.
The first time I have spoken of this to others. My father died last year in the summer. Going to a funeral in the hot of summer is counterintuitive. It should be cold. When we got to the hospital it was late, close to midnight, maybe later. He had only a monitor on him to show his blood pressure and heart rate. In May he had an operation to remove an unknown tumor from his abdomen. In this surgery they found the tumor inoperable. The BP and heart rate numbers showed that there was a dramatic change in their pattern sometime prior. My father was unresponsive and showed signs of having had a stroke. His appearance was not that of a person I had known. His breathing was labored. His appearance was different.
He did not deserve this as an end. Sixty-six years old. The tumor was caused by exposure to asbestos. It takes years for this to manifest itself in the form of tumor and days to complete its task. I told him I loved him for the first time two years before this. The first time I said it I think he was unsure of what to say. Later, he told me as well and for that I am happy. When we got to the hospital, I remember lying down on a chair and talking to him. I told him it would be ok, and that he should not be afraid. I'm not sure how I knew to tell him this, it just came. I started to fall asleep and I thought about a friend of mine who died a year before in a car accident. I asked him to look after him and to show him where to go. My mom told us when we got there that earlier he had said that he has just had a stroke. She checked him and said, no, that she didn't think so. A moment later he repeated that he thought that he had had a stroke.
I regret that when he had his operation that I was not there. I thought it would be routine. The surgeon was a true asshole. Technically he did his job, but it is the nurses that cared for him at that hospital that will receive my eternal thanks. Two great moments of this week in my life. One occurred before he died and one after. While in the hospital just after his operation, he was in bed in one of those hospital gowns that shows your ass to the world. He stood up to get to the bathroom or to get something and just as he did he showed the hospital staff the details of his nakedness. It was fucking beautiful. He didn't realize this was happening until we were all in tears and gasping for breath. The second was on the way out of the crematorium where his body and casket were taken. My brother recalled the scene from The Big Lebowski in which Donny's ashes are scattered into the wind and they end up in The Dude's face. This was also a very good time for humor to inject itself.
Bruce M. Wagner. I hope that another day I will know you again. There should be more words to describe his time here. The kinds of things that come to mind cannot be accurately put down in this way. He was quiet and humble and a good man, a good person. I see myself in him regularly and I miss him.
