Today the door stands open. Miss Sadie and the Cowboy are basking in a patch of sun out on the deck. The shades are pulled up, the window quilts tucked to one side. It is a fine thing to look out on the shining afternoon. It seems impossible that such a day could hold any sadness, and yet it does. I suppose all days carry their full measure of whatever life holds. We travel our roads to their ends, and then we find out what comes next. We leave a legacy in the memories of the people who kept us company for some part of our journey. This is in celebration of three lives well-lived, and now completed.
- In celebration of the life of Helmy El-Sherif, a brilliant man with a gift for friendship, an abiding love of family, and an irrepressible enthusiasm for his adopted country. You met Helmy perched on a camel in a postcard from Egypt, and at Pier 44, reflecting on his arrival in the U.S. 50 years before.
- In celebration of the life of June King, a talented mother who passed on a robust sense of humor to her children. You met her son Jim and his wife Rose—Jim showed us apricots in bloom and Rose canned those apricots with us. You met John and his wife Betsy—they’ve talked with us about the challenges and rewards of cherry farming and filled our hands to overflowing with raspberries. Together the four of them run King Orchards, and what with one thing and another, you have visited them a lot, in every season. You met June’s daughter, Judy King, a retired teacher who organizes food drives across the County, assembling an army of volunteers from the Antrim Democratic Party every year, several times a year, year after year, with unfailing good cheer.
- In celebration of the life of Bernice Biggs, a woman of strong principles, great kindness, and the San Franciscan’s love of excellent treats. You met her son, my brother-out-law Chef Franklin, whose column on Nutella beguiled you.
You just never know how—or where—you will be remembered with warmth.
Posted in: Everything else on Torch Lake Views
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Karma
March 14, 2012
Sorry for your losses, Gerry. Sounds like they were lives well lived.
Hopefully you and the duo are enjoying this warmth of spring while we have it. As lovely as it has been for a few days, I can’t help thinking Mama Nature isn’t quite done with winter.
Gerry
March 14, 2012
We are done with winter.
Carsten
March 14, 2012
Bernice Biggs, Helmy El-Sherif and June King. Receive my wishes for your journey beyond the end of the road. May you find your way to be remembered.
Gerry
March 14, 2012
Hi Carsten – I can promise you that all three of these will be well-remembered for a long time to come. People of character and joy.
Martha
March 14, 2012
What lovely memorials you have written. We should all be so fortunate to be remembered with such careful words. Mine? “She loved Clif Bars, rode a scooter and complained a lot.”
Your images are so beautiful and thoughtful.
Gerry
March 14, 2012
I’m glad you liked the post. I think there are quite a few other things for which you’ll be remembered, Martha, not the least of which will be those fine images you make. OK, and the scooter.
Dawn
March 14, 2012
Oh dear…I didn’t want to finish reading once I realized the part about life completed. That’s a good word for three people that had very interesting and wonderful lives! I went and found the obituaries. Dr. El-Sherif went to MSU! 🙂 Such an interesting man. Mrs. King brought up some wonderful children, that’s for sure, and I found the loveliest photo of Mrs. Biggs. Thanks for sharing a little bit of them with us. It’s sad when they have to go, but these three sure left their marks on the world in a good way.
Gerry
March 14, 2012
That’s nice, to go and read about them that way. Thank you, Dawn. They would all be so surprised. But that’s the thing, isn’t it – we never know what kind of ripple effect a life will have, or what wonders there might be where the road ends.
Ed LaFreniere
March 14, 2012
Such wonderful tributes — and a reminder that beautiful words need not wait until a loved one has passed away, leaving us full of regrets over opportunities missed.
Gerry
March 14, 2012
Thank you Ed.
shoreacres
March 14, 2012
Your tributes are understated in the best way. Really, they are lovely and individual, giving a sense of each person.
But those photos – oh, my. Tomorrow would have been my mother’s 94th birthday, and I really hadn’t thought much of it until I saw those photos. Such powerful expressions of absence. I believe I’ll just sit here and sniffle a bit. 😉
Gerry
March 14, 2012
There’s room right here on this log. We’ve been sitting here watching the stars come out. Thinking. It’s peaceful tonight. Almost like summer. Mom would love it here.
Nye
March 14, 2012
These are beautiful tributes Gerry, and they sure will be missed by their loved ones.
Heather
March 15, 2012
Very kind of you. I shed a couple tears thinking about your people and my own people. I’m sorry your friends have passed out of your life, but glad you got to enjoy one another.
P.j. grath
March 15, 2012
Very nice tributes, Gerry, and the road ending at the water is a happy touch. Yesterday would have been the birthday of a dear friend of mine who died at age 30. I thought of her several times throughout the day. They remain with us.
Gerry
March 15, 2012
Nothing like looking at water to ease a person’s mind. I suppose for other people it’s looking at the trees, or the prairie, or the mountains, or the stars. I like those things too, but water is most effective.
I like to think whatever is good in us lives on in the memories of the people who knew us best.
Joss
March 16, 2012
Now that I’ve figured out what is going on with the WordPress comment facility I can repost the comment I failed to post yesterday.
How wonderful to have a memorial up on the internet like this. I too went back and read the previous post about Helmy El-Sherif. It is heartening to hear a success story like this, and that the American Dream is not dead. I have recently been studying with pupils ‘Of Mice and Men’ and ‘A View From the Bridge’. I’m sure they now think that America is a dead-end place. I suppose both novels were written in riposte to others which idealised and glamorised the place. But those are not now remembered, at least not by us. What actually were they? You would know.
Gerry
March 16, 2012
Thank you for going to so much trouble, Joss. I always enjoy your perspective on things.
I never even think of “Of Mice and Men” as a novel because it is engraved in my memory as an astonishing evening of theatre in the late 1960s. Long before the Broadway production, James Earl Jones played Lennie very off-off Broadway at Purdue University’s professional theatre program. Seeing that was a peak experience. And honestly I thought “Bridge” was a play from the beginning.
For both John Steinbeck, writing in the 1930s, and Arthur Miller, writing in the 1950s, America was a place of unfulfilled promise and broken dreams. The Great Depression and the McCarthy Era were pretty grim periods. I don’t think either artist was reacting to idealized portrayals, but rather relating the narratives of their own times as they lived them. What would they think of the culture today? Interesting question.
Keep in mind that both of them were screenwriters working at the very heart of the mythmaking machine. Arthur Miller married Marilyn Monroe for heaven’s sake. What does that mean? We are a complicated species.