Goodbye Columbus, Goodbye Old Friend
I lost one of my best friends Tuesday night. But so did you. So did the world. But this is about my relationship with him, not yours.
I met him through my husband, who had known and loved him for years. Kent introduced me to him after I’d finally re-learned how to read in my thirties. My love for him was instantaneous.
How could I not love him?
He took me to Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Manhattan more times than I can count. He took me to the Midwest and Vermont and the east coast. Then Prague. He took me to Israel and all throughout Europe. He even took me back in time. He took me to alternate realities.
Then he took me into the wonder of the male mind, the male psycho-sexual experience. He helped me fall in love with men all over again — in a way I’d never known before because I was taught that male sexuality was an ugly, dirty, unwelcome thing.
I’m angry I was taught this because it is untrue.
It is not ugly and dangerous. It’s like anything else in this world: it is both beautiful and not, depending on how it’s expressed, and the man within whom it dwells. He taught me to honor and respect men in a whole new way, and as the wife of a man, a mother of a son, I’m so very grateful my friend showed me this and taught me compassion and empathy and understanding for men, male sexuality, in all its permutations.
He and I had the most intimate friendship one can possibly have with a complete stranger. He showed me his inner and outer worlds. He showed me his heart, his mind, his grace, his foibles, his imperfections, his fears, and he did it without apology, without arrogance.
He taught me how important stories are, and how to dig a hole and shine a flashlight in — he taught me the place to dig was in the center of my being. He taught me that “writing has to be larger and darker and deeper than life.”
Goodbye, Nathan; goodbye, David, goodbye, Mickey; goodbye Alexander; goodbye, Bucky — I fell for you the hardest, maybe because you were my first.
Finally, goodbye, Philip. Thank you for loving me, and the world so much that you left the best parts of yourself here so that we will never really be without you, for eternity. So that we’ll be able to be with you and love you, in all your many facets, again and again.
You will literally be with us “in spirit:” unlike the words stated by the living to convey they will in fact not be there at all to your function, party, wedding, whatever it is…you WILL be here because of your love for humanity, in all its imperfect, flawed, and beautiful transience.
Rest in peace, my friend. Thank you for being here with me when no one else could, and simply because no one else would do.
— J.A. Carter-Winward
https://www.nytimes.com/…/…/obituaries/philip-roth-dead.html
