RIP, my Kurtz and Ensign

Yes, Rest in Peace, Mom and Dad. Those names were the pseudonyms I gave them seven years ago in my journals about their final years on this planet.

Less than a year after their passing six months apart, their children were distributing their effects, selling their things and splitting their estate’s assets. Their executrix and my younger sister, Harvard, faced a daunting task trying to be fair to the seven surviving children in the face of a 90 year accumulation of treasures, stuff, memorabilia, and the like.

It was in the seventh month point in this process that I recognized that I should celebrate lives well read

They had been Floridian transplants in that state’s SW corner since they arrived in 1975. They resided either on the Caloosahatchee River or within buckshot range of its brown watered banks, until their deaths four years ago. The two communities where they lived in were mostly populated with Yankees either in retirement or close to it. They were both populated with an eclectic mash of self made, degreed professionals or inherited monied folks, so I’d call these congregations real mixes.

On the one hand, the core groups were retired professionals of the greatest generation, who had done their military service, sought college diplomas, married, raised their children, worked hard and finally had had enough of the cold northern climes and decided to give their achy weary bones a break from any more cold arctic blasts.

On the other hand there was a larger group made up of an ever-changing cast of baby boomer, expat-northerners who happened to be smart enough to get outta Dodge City before they turned 65. The split between these two groups was probably 40/60.

Some of the longest-standing members of this diaspora met every Sunday after they attended various church services. Every Wednesday a subset of the men would meet for bagels without their spouses. They were irascible, mostly first marriage couples, who ranged from comfortable retirements to the very wealthy which included one billionaire. All of the husbands and one of the wives had spent time in the military. Some spoke the foreign language of their immigrant parents in addition to English. By the time I got to know them they were firmly parked in Florida, rarely travelling due to the post 9-11 security hassles. The men debated topics ranging from cars, politics, children, religion, race, history and really anything under the sun.

They were not tough to get to know in a comprehensive way. They were deeply faithful men, but I was certain I only knew small slices of their personalities. With me present, they spoke a lot about history, as well as their time at college or in high school, and the characters they remembered. The one thing they all shared with each other was this: a love of reading.

Books, books, and more books. They talked about them and could quote from them. They all had extensive libraries. These collections had grown so large that most now read new books on electronic reading devices like Kindle or Nook. They had simply run out of space on their bookshelves and in their closets.

From these weekly discussions it appeared to me as though their lives work in their ninth and tenth decades was the dissemination, almost a form of horse trading, of knowledge through personal book lending with each other.

All of them had books that they shared with each other from time to time. These traded treasures were selected with great care to be given to select people on specific topics at specific times. There was a method to their seeming madness — only in retrospect did it become apparent when they came up to each other and said “you need to read this”, they were each others’ professors of life, who offered the others challenging reading in order to be sufficiently informed. Especially on topics where there were wide divides of opinions and facts thereon,

Where they got this notion that they could script their discussions in such a way, I haven’t a clue. It was genius.

So, when Kurtz and the Ensign’s book collection came into my hands for distribution, I was surprised at how many books from these other fellows were present. There were also multiple Kindles and Nooks full of books, dog-eared, old yellow paged hardback books, a thousand plus pounds of paperbacks in shipping box after shipping box of books. As I perused the titles and the handwritten notes and underlinings inside these books, it hit me: they had spent spent much of life filling out and extending their high school and college great book seminar syllabuses without being bookish or settling for the comfort in what they knew or thought they knew about life and the world around them.

It was profoundly fitting that my final memory of their expansive, inquisitive lives was when I sent the entire collection to three of their great grandchildren for reading and keeping. They each already had overflowing bookshelves and closets full of books. It was now time to start their post-home libraries and educations.

Rest In Peace Mom and Dad. I really didn’t know what I had had until I saw for myself what you had read.

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