It is impossible for me to set aside the memory of what happened with Johnny and Melinda. After a generally tranquil but creative life (his oppressive memories of the infantry in World War II being the key shadow on his spirit), Johnny died suddenly and peaceably in the middle of the night. Aged but remarkably vibrant, a man of cheerful good spirits and significant intellect, Johnny expired quietly in his sleep, in his own bed. Sometimes God is successful and rewards good people.
When they found each other in the later pages of the Book of Life, they deeply understood the text of human experience.
Johnny dismissed his occasional ailments and practically walked through more than one significant orthopedic surgery. “They just have to fix it,” he’d chuckle with me. “I don’t have a lot of time to lie around so I’ll help them by using it just as soon as they’re finished!”
When I got the call at 2 AM about Johnny’s life concluding, I could see his slightly arced smile and all but hear his melodious voice. He was just so decidedly likable; the war and the hard-won business ventures and the earlier divorces and the occasional mischief of his quintessentially American personal history had never combined to dampen this ripe, appealing guy and his soul never limped into old age.
Melinda was his third wife and, without question, his best friend. They were raised in different faiths but had their own liturgy and a closed circle of weeping. For some fourteen years, they danced together, stayed up late with friends whom they feted and regaled with laughter and libations, played long tournaments of golf and tennis.
But what they did the best was to share each other’s secrets. I didn’t know all the secrets, of course, but I certainly was informed by their pattern of sharing. They both had suffered and rejoiced in previous chapters of their lives. When they found each other in the later pages of Book of Life, they deeply understood the text of human experience. Both of them carried the spiritual apprehension of life’s swift turns and turned that into glee and a responsible abandon.
In truth, she loved him more than he did her. Or, shall we say, differently? He had killed men and suffered through wartime experiences that no motion picture could possibly reenact. He never knew where his two Purple Hearts were and didn’t care. He was ambivalent about God—a sensible reaction to God’s own infuriating inconsistency with us. He managed his expectations and, while passionate, he was not particularly quixotic. Melinda was the romantic flame that kept him warm, loyal, and who taught him the relief of intimacy. She lightened his sadness. They had a damn good time together and I don’t know what the hell else really matters.
I wasn’t that surprised (though severely shaken) when the second call came through to me at 4 AM: Melinda had taken her own life. God help me: I started to chuckle ruefully, muttering to myself, “Son of a bitch. Nobody loves like that anymore.”
I buried them side-by-side in cold sunshine the next day. I especially took in the numbing stillness of the cemetery and wanted to linger. I always hear spirits whispering in these fields of memory and there was a lot for souls to discuss. But my professional duties compelled me to retire to “the house of mourning” so the still-living, still-taking, could unload with their gossip, speculation, and criticism about what happened with Melinda and Johnny.
Their adult children did not hold back their guilt, recriminations, and their use of me as a proxy for “what kind of God would allow such-and-such?” I’m always okay with this—grief bends the human mind and squeezes the heart. I honored the sundry preachments, denunciations, and certainly wiped people’s tears.
But from above, I could hear the angels making unimaginable music with my two friends. I want to live like them and I surely want to die like them.
Ben Kamin’s next book, ‘ROOM 306: The National Story of the Lorraine Motel,’ will be published this year by Michigan State University Press.
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