A Celebration of Tim

Tim had time, before the cancer finally got him, to think about his obituary. In the place--surely invented by a mortician--where it almost always lists which of the deceased's relatives have already died, Tim wrote: "Tim was preceded in death by Ghengis Khan, and grandparents. . . ."

Loyal wrote the eulogy. Loyal has a keen eye for seeing what it is that makes us what we are, and he nailed it, again. Loyal will be preceded in death by everyone he knows who is capable of saying for him what he is able to say for others, and it is a damned shame. Not his eventual death; but that he needs someone as inciteful and eloguent as he.

Another Tim reminded me that he was one of the people responsible for bringing Jesus to me--not me to Jesus: that was beyond his considerable imagination. Once he hauled a plaster-of-paris Jesus to my house, in the dead of night, and stood him up so Jesus could look into the kitchen window. Because I knew where Jesus had come from, I hid him in the garage for about two years, until Tim and his disciples graduated. Those were terrifying years; my accessory-to-crime years.

It was not a funeral. It was a gathering of Tim Twito's friends. It was a gathering of bright and articulate and talented people, and that they had gathered was tribute in itself, such as few of us have a right even to hope for.

Death is not always the enemy. Sometimes the enemy is not having made waves when we could have.

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