In memory...

 My friend John passed away last night. He was 88.I met him last year, and we struck up a friendship. He’d tell me stories about being a filmmaker and photographer, crossing India and Asia with reels of film in the 1950s and 60s. There were stories of strange airport encounters, kind people he met along the way and insights he still carried; traveller tales. He took out an album of black and white stills and recalled the moments each frame had frozen in time. There were staged photos of a hollywood actress, a portrait of Eamonn DeValera and other political figures whose names are now in the buried annals of time.Some days he read me poems, other days we just sat and watched the garden birds. He’d hang out nuts in bird-feeders by the large kitchen window and counted the passing robins, chaffinches, blue tits and the precious rare sightings of goldfinches. There was a little bird identification chart beside the window to check he was correct, for John was a man of principle and exactitude. His days had an order which gave rise to a freedom within. Or so it seemed that way.In this last year John knew his body was failing- he was in a wheelchair now, and in need a lot of nursing care- but as his limbs gave up, his mind resisted. Instead it was a treasury of memories which he added to with scrabble, sport scores, headlines, stacks of biographies, a book about the life on the Blasket Islands, contemporary fiction, other stories. When it all got too much, when headline after headline became too intense (American politics, Brexit, refugee crisis, housing issues) , it was to poetry he turned, more and more as the days passed. He had read a book review in The Sunday Times about a new poetry anthology, and ordered it immediately. He particularly liked a poem about a cockroach, or was it a turtle, I can’t remember, but he did, and asked me to read it twice. He loved the turn of words, the way the description left space for the imagination and the poetic exactitude of each line. Once, he read me one of his own poems, a short simple one, about an overcoat and an umbrella- the kind a gentleman would use. I could picture him standing right in the centre of the poem with space and sentiment entwined.John was polite in that old gentlemanly way too, never refusing my baking and cooking attempts. He tried everything from the courgette fritters with tzatziki, to the spelt lots of things, to the floppy sponge. The flop did not seem to matter, but the gesture did, which in turn made me feel good.For his birthday I gave John a little squirrel print, one of my watercolour drawings. He didn’t wait around, had it framed, and hung it among his other artwork- some from his mother, which she had bought in China in the 1920s and some paintings by his brother Patrick. My little squirrel became part of the furniture, and in doing so brought me happiness too.‘I’m too emotional’, he’d confess to me, with tears streaming down his face, remembering the days in the past, or appreciating his two children. Still, he let the tears come, wiping them away with a handkerchief and returning it to his breast pocket, as a gentleman would.When I visited him in hospital a few weeks back he was distressed. ‘I’m afraid I’ve made a show of myself Clare’, he said. He had been up during the night, in a lot of pain, and had been shouting. His body was failing and his mind was kicking back, loudly. His son wheeled him out into the lobby of Bantry hospital, overlooking the carpark. There were no little bird visitors, but there was sky and light and that seemed to help. We filled the gaps with tea and presence. It was enough for the moment.I saw him one more time after that, briefly, last week. He was at home, sitting up in his chair, in pain; the cancer in his spine was moving and shifting and darting aches and discomfort around his failing body. ‘It’s difficult, this dying’, he told me. He did not want to return to hospital and was willing to make some compromises in his medical treatment to keep him at home. ‘I’m not afraid of leaving’, he added, with another tear… ‘this earthly plane’, and in those moments all the truth and pain and courage and knowing that the life he had was leaving. His mind had accepted it now. You could see it in his face.The local Church of Ireland minister arrived, to give him solace, and I stood up to leave. I was about to walk away, but turned back and planted a soft kiss on his cheek, accompanying it with a ‘smooch’ sound. We both laughed. A little friendship sealed. ‘Goodbye John’, I said, ‘I’ll see you soon’.I’m not sad that he is gone. I’m touched, and moved. My heart is full for this little friendship that came into my life in his last year. No, I’m not sad. He knew it was time, and there was living in his dying. Our friendship was full of the simple things of floppy cake and goldfinches and poetry. It’s the simple things that we move our way towards in the end, that, and friendship. In his dying John opened a door to those things for me, and for that I’ll carry a little pocket of this year of friendship with me on my own travels. I also want to get a bird identification chart, to help me remember.…In memory of  Mr. John Sarsfield, 1929-201710 Oct, 2017.