Tuesday, September 23, 2003

Three Out of Four Ain’t Bad

There are many ways to tell if one has chosen the proper florist to retain, I suppose. Certainly, you want to find their work visually pleasing, and an efficient delivery service is a must in these fast-paced times in which we live.

But friends, you know you've stuck with the right flower seller for over a decade, through the occasional botched centerpiece or wilted nosegay, when the clerk at the counter doesn't bat an eye as you dictate the sentiment for a funeral arrangement:

As the poets have mournfully sung,
Death takes the innocent young,
The rolling in money,
The screamingly funny,
And those who are very well hung.

I didn't make that up, by the way. It's Auden, a little limerick the dear man tossed off in 1960, titled "The Aesthetic Point of View".

Death does not, we know, discriminate mighty from meek, but among the ways to go, rock climbing accidents tend to favor the bold. That was Todd in a nutshell: never daunted by a challenge, always spoiling for an adventure, sexy and profane, loving deeply, living boldly. How I envied him.

We hadn't seen each other in almost five years and that was a chance meeting as we were both changing planes in Chicago. Across a crowded O'Hare concourse came this lumbering frat boy, blowsy auburn hair pitched at odd angles, a huge, endless hug. Fifteen minutes we passed together, maybe 20, and he was off to points west, to a new life, he said.

Chatty e-mail messages, at least one a month, kept me abreast of his travels and his new job, jokes and Michael, who he loved with affection so fertile and whole you wanted to laugh and cry at its intensity. Michael came to dinner whenever he was in town -- and will be a welcome guest always -- and never lacked for a riotous story about his lover's latest exploit.

Todd could tell a story like no one else, especially if it was a story about you. I liked hearing about my flaws and folly from Todd; I took ribbing from him I wouldn't take from anyone else because he could make me laugh at -- and learn from -- myself. A singular gift.

In thanks for that, when he left our little group (almost ten years ago now; are we all that old?), I inscribed his card with another epigram of Auden's: "Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh."

The least I can do is pass on the gift and, so, the limerick and an arrangement of flowers bursting with every color you can imagine. Funny and radiant, just like Todd. Funerals, after all, are for the living and as we share a fondness for black humor, I know it will give Michael a smile.

Particularly my postscript: "Well, three out of four ain't bad."

And wheresoever he is now, Todd can puzzle out what that means too, beyond that he was loved, so very, very much.