ANOTHER GOODBYE

His name was Bill and he was one of my teachers. My mentors. I had three of them. They arrived in my life, one by one. Just in time. Just when I needed them most. Adults, they were. Flawed of course. But each one invited me into their world with an open heart. And now they are all gone.

I think they were happy to have me around too. Because I practiced. Bill was my guitar teacher. He gave me homework and I did it. Like his arrangement for “One Note Samba.” Yeah, one note my ass. I woodshedded that thing until I was seeing visions of Antonio Carlos Jobim in my scrambled eggs. Hundreds and hundreds of times I played it. Never perfect or completely in the pocket. But he cheered me on until I could do it “pretty good.” And pretty good was a quantum leap for me.

Back in the day, Bill brought his big guitar to his nightclub gigs. He must have played “Misty” and “The Lady is A Tramp” thousands of times. Down-down-down with his right hand while the fingers on his left stretched across the fretboard like a dancing starfish, forming lush, sumptuous chords. Late at night he’d tune his radio to the local jazz station and analyze bass lines, what the sax is doing, piano, drum, guitar… He taught me to listen too although I will never hear what he could hear. The man was brilliant.

But he told me he didn’t really learn music until he got off the road and began teaching. When you have to explain something you have been doing intuitively your whole life, well it’s like a bucket of cold water in your face. He knew WHAT to do but now he had to learn how to put it into words.

Bill became a most excellent teacher. He taught me how to listen but he also taught me how to see. The man had an uncommon connection with mother earth. There he is, standing at the door, just standing, looking like the soles of his feet are plugged in to some unseen force. Grounded, like a mountain.

And oh he loved the mountains. And trees. And “puffer” clouds in a big blue sky.

Once Bill takes me on a hike in the San Gabriel’s, the rugged mountains near Los Angeles. We trudge across a grassy meadow when he suddenly stops and points at my boot. “Look at that flower! ” His ebullience is like a little kid on Christmas morning opening the most beautiful package under the tree. The flower looks like a weed to me. A plain little white thing that I am about to walk by or worse, crush with my big size 9.

“Look at it.  Look at it.”

“Okay, okay. I’ll look at it.” I bend over and really look. You know what, the little flower is exquisite. But how would I have known? I have to climb out of my “city slicker” high chair and get my face in the dirt. But he knows.

And he isn’t done, that Bill. He leads me to the top of the mountain where he opens his arms, like eagle wings, and bellows “WONKA, TONKA. BIG MEDICINE.” You can hear his resonate voice echoing to the next ridge and I’m thinking my guitar teacher is nuts. I’m also thinking he has stamina like a Budweiser Clydesdale has stamina. This man who is the same age as my mother. What I need right now is oxygen, a couple Snicker Bars and a bottle of Gatorade. Not him, he’s too busy being “at one” with the earth and the sky.

Maybe that’s how Bill celebrated 90 years and a few more. It helps that he married a good woman, Pat, and they lived a sweet life in Carson City, Nevada. Close to the Sierra’s. And close to the casinos. He loved to play the ponies and take a little nip of happy juice. If there is a heaven, I hope there’s a racetrack. And a bar.

I gave up guitar to play the ukulele because I don’t have the kind of brain that can do both. But my guitar chops inform the way I play the uke, from strumming to fingerpicking to pulling melodies out of those four strings. Bill was very gracious when I decided to go all aloha. Towards the end, he had to abandon the guitar too, when his hands and fingers just couldn’t do it anymore. A sad coda indeed. But he still had mother earth. And Pat. And his family and friends who love him.

I think our lives right now, right here, are the sum total of all our experiences and reflecting pools for the people we encounter along the way. I bring Bill to all my gigs. And my classes. He’s there reminding me to listen when the breezes sing through the Eucalyptus trees outside our bedroom window. He’s there when I see something extraordinary in the palette of my everyday life.  Thank you Bill.

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I received a torrent of emails in response to my last blog “Not Your Normal Trip to Trader Joe’s.” Thank you for the support and for sharing your stories. I think this subject hits home for a lot of us but we don’t always talk about it. Well I’m talking about it because I don’t want to suffer or see the people I care about suffer and knowledge is power. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is devastating. In my experience, I have little hope that someone with NPD will get better. Maybe they have a good day, or week, but inevitably they return to their old ways. There are techniques you can use to diffuse and distract. Or you may have to disengage and estrange yourself so you can live your own life. Read up on this stuff. It may help.