I don't know if everyone else thinks about Darryl every day, but I do. He died while Jon and I were driving across the country in January. When Hilary died in 1977, I missed that event too and it stayed with me for so long that I learned a life lesson: never miss the funeral. And if possible, don't miss the death. In Hilary's case, I missed both. I was a sophomore at Oberlin and the advice from home was to stay at school, don't come to Virginia. In hindsight I now know that was bad advice. I understand why they said that, of course, as it was quite complicated to try to get home from Ohio in the middle of September without someone actually driving all the way to come get me. But my heart broke on September 19, 1977 and it stayed broken for a long time.
It is possible that missing Hilary's funeral is what made me such a funeral attender. In the nearly 40 years since then I have made a serious effort to go to every funeral and memorial service that I am connected to. It is always meaningful and I am always glad. It is worth it to me to get on a plane in the morning, rent a car, drive to the service, sit in the back, say nothing to anyone, drive back to the airport and fly home in the same day. For me, I have to be there to be part of the unique group that gathers to remember, honor, speak of, cry for, and sometimes bury the person who is gone. It is a critical part of the human experience. If you miss that, you miss it forever. Also, it matters a lot to the people who were closest to the person.
All the people at home in early January did everything just right when Darryl died. I was sort of part of it because Mom called me as soon as she found him (and sent Michael Lipsky to verify what she thought she was seeing) and asked me what to do. I called Anna, knowing she would know what to do. Meanwhile Jon said, repeatedly, call the police. He was right and that was what Anna said too. I called Carrie and told her what was going on, knowing she would want to be part of things. Jim joined the group too. Anyway, the point is, Darryl's body was in the company of many people who cared about him and everything was handled well.
I thought about Darryl a lot for the rest of the trip, but I didn't cry. His death wasn't a death to cry about, really. Without any sort of planning or even without much warning, he just died quietly in his chair. He could not have managed it better. Apparently the days just before he died were hard for him (I last saw him on the last Saturday of his life and he was in excellent spirits, unusually fine) because the weather turned very cold and he suffered in the cold. Everything was so much harder for him in extreme heat or cold: walking, moving, driving. In hindsight, people say that he got weaker in those last days. He died on Thursday, my mother thinks, although the death certificate says Friday because that's when she finally went into his room to verify that he wasn't just napping.
When we got home I took it upon myself to find a date that we could get together and celebrate Darryl. His family is not the sort of family that organizes things like this -- he has two sons ("the twins") in the area, an ex-wife (with whom he had a very good relationship) and a daughter who lives far away and a son who is estranged from the family. It was not presumptuous of us to take this task, in other words. I checked with the twins and the ex-wife to be sure they could come on the day, and they were glad to come.
I knew right away that if it were at all possible, we should gather in the greenhouse. Darryl would have loved nothing more than to have his own greenhouse. His whole life, he puttered with plants. He loved plants and flowers and trees and bushes and gardens and all that went into creating beautiful spaces. He didn't have anywhere to put up a greenhouse and he never had a penny, so he just used whatever corners were available on the farm, and started seedlings at the very first opportunity. He was completely happy, sitting on a stool in a sunny place, spotting out flower plants...even with those big clumsy fingers.
The first two weeks of February were bitterly cold, but we stayed with the chosen date of February 15. It was a sunny, windy day. The ground was frozen so hard that everyone was allowed to drive all the way through the farm, anywhere they wanted. We assembled at 4:00 when it was still warm inside, but the sun was on the way down toward the trees.
There were maybe 60 of us. We sat on green baskets and stools, and many people stood, wrapped in their winter coats. Carrie had cleaned up the greenhouse and put down a new layer of landscape cloth so we wouldn't trip on the raggedy floor. A few of us brought some Darryl-style snacks. There was plenty of Pellegrino water, his favorite. I remembered that the last meal we shared was in the greenhouse, a Friday Lunch in late November, he was so tickled to be eating in that warm space that he thought we should do that all the time.
There was no music, no poetry (except Mel's beautiful poem written in his honor), no ritual. We just told stories. We pieced together what we knew of him and we talked about why we loved him -- in spite of his curmudgeonly ways. He was a character (when I called Benjamin to tell him that Darryl had died, Benjamin lamented that the last of the interesting people from the old days was gone now). He was so difficult and yet so generous and caring. He had become so much less angry in the last 27 years since he stopped drinking. He was stoic, strong, principled, independent, creative, dogged, always in pain, never complaining, and he took care of people. He swore viciously but usually when he thought no one could hear him. He was grateful for the gifts of his life, which most people would not have said were very many, but he knew how to count them.
He would have loved that gathering, and he would not have predicted so many people would come.
I will probably think about him every single day this summer, and beyond. He has been a presence around here for the last 30 years or so. He could be an aggravating, complicated presence, but after I realized that he was here to stay, I decided he was like an uncle and we just needed to take him in and help him be who/where he wanted to be. We built him a dry, warm space to sleep -- like an outdoor cat being allowed to stay inside. He didn't get any petting, his life was not easy, but he was safe and warm.
Darryl Rodney Wright was born on August 15, 1936. He lived a long and interesting life, on his own terms. He died on January 8/9, 2015. We will miss him tremendously.
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