I can see him now, striding down a San Francisco street, two newspapers tucked under one arm, magazines slipping out of the back pocket of his black jeans. Black curls dancing in the fog, high-stepping in those Vans as if the sidewalk played his tune.
I see him fiddling with his guitar; checking out maps in his travel books: straightening shelves of poetry.
Now the kids are in town for the memorial.
Oh how he loved his kids. His grandkids.
Oh how he adored his mom and dad.
He’s not here, but lots of folks are.
Who will tell the newspaper stories now? What about the high school prom? His years on the KU campus; poetry readings at the Tansy bookshop, hanging with John Moritz; Tales of running the record store in the mall; printing flyers on a press in The City; hunting for weed in San Blas, Mexico; making potato salad and macaroni salad and tunafish salad at the Kentucky Street house while we watched the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Weekend Muscular Dystrophy Telethon; ripping wire service copy while working at the San Francisco Chronicle; and stuffing the important stuff into his briefcase; escorting Carol Doda from the parking garage to the stage door in North Beach.
Who else but Brian, out walking one day in SF and encountering a film shoot, would hop on a bus with a bunch of extras, and wind up sitting behind Karl Malden and Michael Douglas in a pivotal scene in an episode of “The Streets of San Francisco.”
Returning to Lawrence after a many-year absence, and consuming Jayhawk football and basketball.
Who’s left to read from those ink-stained notebooks with lists and thoughts stacked like seashells, testaments to the past?
I can see him now curious as ever, pounding the keys late into the night, researching, unraveling stories, digging into inequalities, angry at injustice, rapacious Big Pharma, and still seething over the way the Democratic Party treated Bernie Sanders in 2016.
Sorting and filing in old metal cabinets from another era, trying to make sense of it all.
Wandering mid-afternoon to a storage unit tucked away in Marin County.
I can see him now driving authors around, schooling them on Bay Area life;
San Francisco history, Berkeley myths, Oakland grit.
From his Oakland, Berkeley or Lawrence homes, we talked while I walked the Oakland Hills. We talked about the old days and old relationships. Lovers and friends we would never forget. Conversations were complicated, sometimes contentious: we’d argue about politics.
In the end, our conversations meandered like jazz solos.
Every now and then he’s pause to ask, “Am I talking too much?”
And then we’d digress some more.
I can see him now in pain; on tired days, brutal nights,
never stopping, still giving it a go.
I see him again; this time on a Berkeley street, leather jacket open against the wind, heading toward that Thai place on Solano Avenue, where they know his order by heart.
The grandkids are here now, watching wide-eyed, listening to friends’ stories ripple through the grown-ups.
And I can see him still, nursing a drink in a dim-lit bar in Lawrence, soaking up the local color. Strangers drift over to him, their lives spilling out in small confessions, and he listens, really listens, until they feel like they’ve known him forever.
The cabinets are now empty, the books are gone, the house shut down.
Nothing will ever be quite the same.
Sadness is a gift of a life well spent.
Memories are heightened by tears.
Grief is a luxury for the living.
I can see him now, leaning back,
dressed in black,
smiling like he’s still here,
just beyond the edge of the photograph,
waiting for us to catch up.