Charlie Haden died the other day. All these deaths of people I’ve loved from afar. He was a tough, gentle man who refused to betray himself. We used to pay such careful attention to the world, Tess and I. Once upon a time when we had the energy for it. The rage. Who knows? Maybe Tess is out there right now, fighting some war or another. I hope so.
I hope so, but I will not search for her, or for anyone else.
You will return when it is time, or you will not return at all.
About Haden, he had always reminded me of my father and it made me very sad to read that he had died.
Do you see the difference between sadness and all that other muck?
Do you understand that it is not the same?
All day long I’ve been listening to him, an album of spirituals called Steal Away. My dad sent us that record. He wrote across the back in black felt pen, For J and T, One of my very favorites. Especially the last. With love from your Jesus freak father.
I’d forgotten about the inscription. It contains everything. His self-deprecation, his humility and humor, his awareness of my skepticism, his love of music, his love for us, his own shifting mind, inside of which Tess becomes his daughter. And also, I think, his sadness for having lost Claire.
I admire so much about him now. Especially that he kept his humor.
I am listening to that song he loved, especially the last, which is called “Hymn Medley,” and I think of us in his house in White Pine.
It is the night I first arrived.
Poor boy with his life interrupted.
Poor boy suffering the cruelties of the world.
I think of him unpacking my bag as I slept, all he’d lost, all he’d given up. My father bent slightly at the waist, laying my clothes inside the drawers of a yellow dresser, him arranging my shoes on the closet floor, hanging my coat on the door hook, kissing my forehead before turning out the light, before returning alone to his room.
Towards the end of this song my father loved, this medley of hymns, is Haden playing “Amazing Grace.” The bass comes in loud there for a while and the piano falls to the background. It is my favorite part of my father’s favorite piece.
This is the story.
This accrual of days.
These losses.
These sadnesses.
This present.
This music.
There is never any stopping. We are always in motion. The ground is unstable, the plates forever shifting.
Charlie Haden vanishes and the world is altered.
That’s a strange fact and it is one I love.