ghosts

Facebook is a funny thing. I get frequent reminders to send my deceased friend Cam a message, so that we can "keep in touch." I have, from time to time, gone to his page to see what people are saying, and I went there this morning.

What I found was many entries from his newlywed widow, her pain palpable and very much on display: "Cam, I can't live without you. Why did you leave?" "I am devastated that all that is left of you is a box of ashes." "My dear, sweet Cam, I need you so much."

It's incongruous to me that the same medium that provides us with updates from Farmville becomes a venue for the display of such deeply personal emotions. Perhaps now there will be a poll: "Why did Cam kill himself? List your top ten reasons and invite 10 friends!"

This is unkind of me. I spend my days examining the currency of others' emotions, and I'm not ignoring that Cam's widow is in an awful position. When we had lunch with Cam this Spring, he told us about how she took him in when he had ankle surgery and nursed him enthusiastically. He seemed very happy. The "ironist" in my uncharitably points out that Cam was an inveterate hypochondriac. This, I thought, might be a match made in heaven! Hypochondriac meets caretaker. Just might work! Cam disclosed that he had fibromyalgia (of course you do!). His gravestone might well have read "I told you I was sick."

Those of us who "grew up" with Cam knew that his was an exaggerated emotional roller coaster ride. Even a musical partnership with him was fraught with peril, not because he was unkind, but because he had such a difficult time deciding how he felt about anything, or at least deciding for sure how he felt. I reached the conclusion years ago that I would have to let him ride that ride without me. I could stand on the ground and watch him ascend and descend, relieved to be an observer, hoping that the carnies had tightened the bolts sufficiently that he would not go hurtling into space.

That's not to say I don't miss him terribly, that I'm not grateful for his encouragement and support as a musician, a songwriter, a reader of good books and a lover of the well-turned phrase. He was, in his way, a very good friend, and we had some terrific times together.

In the end, it appears that Cam's final marriage was a bond between two good, depressive souls. It looks to have been a tragedy: in which each character brings to the story the seeds of his or her own undoing. My mother's good friend once said "marriage is most often a case of mistaken identity." If it's to last, there is a lot of grinding, difficult work to do. Romance keeps us at it, no doubt, but we must come to terms with who we actually married, not just who we imagined we married. We must see each other, and, alas, ourselves, for who we really are. This is a moving target at best, more akin to a butterfly than a bull's eye.

There is a fable I like to refer to about the woman who picked up a wounded snake on the road and nursed it back to health. When the serpent was well, she held it on her lap as she had grown used to doing, and it bit her. As she died, she asked "how could you do this to me after I took you in and saved you?" The snake replied: "You knew what I was when you took me in."

Cam wasn't cold blooded or serpent like, mind you. He was a brilliant, creative, talented, generous individual. He was also a romantic narcissist of the first order. Abandoned by his father, raised by an alcoholic mother, he found what he could find in life the best he could, trying to fill a glass that that leaked, no matter how much he put in it. He searched for his Dad and found the man's ashes, just missing the reunion he longed for. This life left him ill equipped for the tedious, personal work of marriage and partnership.

My observation was that Cam tended to love and marry very strong people, women with intelligence, beauty, and resilience, who came to understand him and could survive him at the very least. One by one, they let him go. I'm not so presumptuous as to say what they learned.

This time, he left badly, leaving a scathing note to a woman ill prepared to handle it. Getting the last word in the worst possible way. Leaving himself, like debris, in his own living room. It was a terrible way to go, and I can't help feeling that it was unworthy of him.

I'm done with anger (well, maybe not quite). Disappointment lasts a while, and then life calls. The bolt loosened, the carny turned his head away, and the small wooden car careened off the track, sailing into the gray sky, a scruffy missile arcing higher and higher and then plummeting toward the ground.

Yes, well, when you think about it it makes sense. An empty glass lies on its side on the kitchen table. A fine Gibson guitar stands in the corner. Those of us who carry on carry on.