Cousin Mark

( This is NOT a poem. Do not read it as a poem. )


Sunday.
Day of big party.
Relatives from afar visiting.
More relatives expected.
Still the morning.
Phone rings.
It’s mom.
Tragedy.
Uncle called.
His son Mark died.
My cousin.
Car accident.
Want details.
None available.
No matter.
No more Mark.

Wow.
And Hell!
Party still goes on.
Uncle’s still coming too.
Double wow.
Good for him.
Mark’s brother and sister show up too.
Very good.
All relatives present show proper grief.
Good.
Party still upbeat overall.
Phew.

Party’s a success.
Everyone goes home.
Except relatives from afar.
They stay.
Overnight.
Four nights in total.
Entourage includes three sons.
Very young.
Very cute.
Very noisy.
Distraction from tragedy.
Emotional roller coaster.
They leave.
Very sad to see them go.
All is quiet.
Mark comes to mind.
Never leaves.

Return to work.
Hard to focus.
How come no one there is aware?
Wasn’t he somebody?
Didn’t he matter?
Didn’t your lives just change?
Surf for information.
Not enough hits.
Why not?

Next day.
Funeral.
There he is.
Lying there.
Not moving.
Very still.
Come on, get up — wake up — open your eyes!
Doesn’t budge.
It’s true then.
But why?
He’s right there.
He looks fine.
Why doesn’t he just get up?
But he doesn’t.
Never will.
Eyes well up.
Turn away.

Watch others arrive.
Relatives.
Friends.
And musicians.
Mark was a musician.
Played in a band.
Played in many bands.
Knew a lot of other musicians.
They knew him.
They cared.
They came.
They grieved.
Filled the pews.
Wonderfully appropriate.

Turns out Mark was good.
Very good.
Worth listening to.
And watching.
Didn’t know.
Never knew.
Never saw him play.
Saw him only occasionally.
Thought he hadn’t amounted to much.
Because he still lived at home!
Mistakenly measured success monetarily.
Again!

Service began.
Minister stumbled for things to say.
Seemed to ramble aimlessly.
Finished abruptly.
This isn’t right.
Something’s missing.
There’s a stir.


And then the most wonderful thing happened.
One of the musicians went to the front with a guitar to sing a song.
He asked the rest of his band to join him.
They did — and so did every other musician in the chapel!
It was the most wonderful show of respect for my cousin — their friend.
They stood together and sang a song in his honour,
while we sat and dried our tears.
It was the most wonderful thing I had ever seen.
I thought about it repeatedly over the next hours, days and forever,
and whenever it came to my mind, tears came to my eyes.
I’ll never get over it.
It was just so amazingly wonderful.
It was just so, so good.
It was the classiest thing they, or anyone, could have done,
and they did it.
I’ll never forget it.
Thank you so very, very much.
Wow.


Tears of sorrow and joy.

---

I have to admit, though, that I saw Mark only occasionally,
never grew close, and therefore, didn’t lose as much as others did.
I never knew him as an accomplished musician,
so I recognize yet another regret in my life.
But what really moved me at the funeral was his true friends’ and associates’
show of utmost respect in singing in his honour.
Perhaps it seemed like just a simple, little thing that they could do,
but in reality, it was huge — huge.

---

The song was the Eagles’ “Seven Bridges Road”.
They renamed it to “Severn Bridge Road” for this occasion,
and the tempo was perfectly suitable.
I hope they’ll sing it again, now and then.

---

Because I saw Mark only very infrequently, I have hardly any anecdotes.

But I do remember a time when our families were in a restaurant.
I was halfway through a glass of Coke, when, into it,
Mark suddenly dropped a little wad of horseradish.
There it sat at the bottom, intact.
I could drink around it, and I tried to,
but then he dumped someone’s milk into the glass
and the result appeared to be rather undrinkable.
(This happened a long, long time ago,
and I still remember how awful it looked.
Try it — you’ll see.)
I then ordered a new Coke, and when it arrived,
I drank it at the grownups’ table.

And there was a time much earlier that I’ll never forget.
I was about eight years old, and it was just after Christmas.
My brother had picked out for me a beautiful, little, toy car.
It was dark green, swoopy and sporty, and I loved it.
So, ... my family was returning from Niagara Falls,
where my Dad’s parents lived,
and we stopped by my uncle’s house.
I had the toy car with me, and my father told me to leave it in the car,
but I didn’t, as I knew that Mark liked cars and I had to show him.
So, very quickly, Mark and I are in a room, playing with this car,
when he suddenly distracts me with a magazine.
I was distracted because it was full of pictures of naked women.
(Between toy cars and pictures of naked women, the pictures win.)
I remember feeling absolutely bewildered as we gazed through this thing.
Then we heard the call that my family was leaving,
so we looked around for my toy car, but couldn’t find it.
We looked everywhere, which was easy,
as there was an absence of nooks and crannies,
but it seemed to have genuinely vanished!
I was stunned! Where could it have gotten to?
But, the family couldn’t wait — we had to go.
We told them to send it when it turned up, but it never did.
And it took me years to realise what must’ve happened.
There’s only one possible explanation.
Mark stole it!
What a rat.
I never brought it up, because there really was no point.
(But I still want my car back.)
I’ll never forgive him.

---

The background I chose for this page is candy.
I remember the time when Mark visited my father in hospital during his last few days.
Mark would have been about 42 years old at the time,
and the kid in him still came to the fore when he went around to everyone
and offered them candy from something he seemed to have just discovered: Pez.

( He kept complaining about how hard it was to load the darn thing
and his brother suggested that it would be easier if he licked the candy first! )

---

Bye, Mark.