Among His Effects

“A great man is one sentence.” Clair Booth Luce

It happened at the dinner table, his favorite place.
Overhead a solitary light hung, lighting the room, the house otherwise dark.
They sat silently, conversation sparse, their thoughts kept secret.
He looked up slowly, dropped his fork and fell from the chair.
Death claimed him on the way down to the cold terrazzo floor.
A simple, easy, quick, sudden death. He would have approved.
She sat frozen in stunned silence, staring, in shock, his wife of long years.
He didn’t move. Nothing moved but time. Poof. Seventy-five years, over.

He lay peacefully in his new coffin home. They came and looked him over.
“Just like him,” some thought. Others said, “Mr. Mac did a real good job.”
All remembered him. They said so to his widow.
She sat there, smiling, confused.

The solemn cortege crept through deserted streets to the city cemetery. His last ride.
Mourners in the shadows of ancient cedars, shivering in the December chill.
He departed, clothed with scripture, prayer and flowers.
The crowd dispersed and withdrew in a hushed retreat.
The family lingered, held captive by the moment in the tranquil setting. Nobody spoke.
A time to remember.

But life goes on, subsumed in the daily details of living. It’s good to be busy now.
In due time his affairs were put in order; his estate settled, cards written.
Life had new rhythms in the empty house. His effects were sorted, parceled, distributed.
Nephews kept his obsolete fishing equipment, now relics for framing not fishing.
A granddaughter kept the wool shirts, the suede jacket, wears them often.
Sons kept the photographs, a few letters, the guns, his prosthetic wooden left hand.
He left little behind, having discovered that little is needed to live well.

He’d kept boxes of financial data, footprints of his life from the early ‘40’s.
Cancelled checks indicated his frugality, the feeding of five thousand with five loaves. His mother, two brothers, a sister, a church, his family, all recipients.
A savings passbook showed small but regular deposits for his sons’ college.
A dollar here, five dollars there. It added up.
Everything in perfect order, as always, anal-retentive to the end.
Obscure were his disciplines, his prudence, his motives. His sentence remained hidden.

We never asked, “Who are you?” He never volunteered to say. His actions spoke.
As years moved on the essence of his persona distilled, providing us clues.
John Locke wrote a man’s mind is best understood by his actions.
What did this man’s actions reveal? Discipline, responsibility, commitment, love.
And by them, he, being dead, yet speaks.
Among his effects we discovered the man, and his unique sentence.
I know these things…I am the elder son, working on a sentence of my own.

Bud Hearn
September 2, 2010