Farewell Jack

I’m pushing 60. Way past the halfway mark. Fifteen good years left, maybe even 20 if the stars align. But that’s it. The 1980s were 45 years ago. I have less than half that. 9/11 was 24 years ago. I probably have less than that too. My guitar is 18 years old. That’s what I have left. I have the age of my guitar.

Other than the usual aches and pains, I don’t feel particularly old. In my head at least I’m still a child. I’m still scared of the same things. I can still sleep until noon on the weekends and build an entire day around a new library book. My imposter syndrome rages even with retirement within reach. Almost 40 years of the 9-5, an assortment of cubicles and 401ks and just enough fear of the proverbial poor-house to keep my skill-set at a level that keeps the corporate grim-reaper at bay. Never been a boss. Never had an actual office. Just one of the “Office Space” guys wandering around the open floor plan looking for my stapler and avoiding the “Bobs”. All I ask for is another few years…..and then I’ll officially “retire”, which in America circa-2025 means I’ll need to find a series of part time jobs to make up for the my looted social security “entitlement”. Maybe me and my guitar will busk our way through the golden years.

In the meantime I’m losing too many friends. Lost another last week. Jack Garvey was a great saxophone player and an even better human. He was one of the sweetest guys I’d ever met. He’d speak ill of no one. He just loved to play. He’d roam the local open mics, and jump up and have a blow. He played in a blues band. His fiancé Monica was always at his side. Just a few short weeks ago he was onstage. And then came the news. He was gone.

People from Dunmore speak of their hometown in reverent tones. There’s something in the air there….some kind of magic dust that finds its way into the cracks of the sidewalks. I haven’t lived there in 30 years and it still feels like home. I’ll always be welcomed back. Jack loved Dunmore like a mystical poet. It had a hold on him and he had a hold on it. He didn’t die a stranger. He died at home. The town, like the rock and roll Jack loved, never forgets. His saxophone should be enshrined in Dunmore. Maybe hang it from the back wall of the stage of The Honky Tonk, one of his favorite places to play. Or pass it around the high school, and have the kids rub it like a genie’s lamp.

The day after the news hit, an open mic in Dickson City that Jack used to frequent featured his picture on the bandstand. Somebody had it framed and mounted on the mic stand. That’s how loved he was.

Once the initial shock wore off, I got pissed off. Why Jack? Why somebody so gentle and kind? Surely there’s a cavalcade of assholes who could have taken his place. There is no shortage of men who add nothing to this world. Have a go at them. Why does it always seem to be the ones that are irreplaceable that are taken away?

This is the long-dormant theist in me talking, of course. Sixteen years of Catholic school is not easily erased, so I still find myself occasionally pissed off at a deity that I no longer believe in. Intellectually I understand that getting sick and dying too young is as random as a lightning strike. Nobody is up in the sky picking people off with a cosmic sniper’s rifle. But that doesn’t stop me from wanting answers. As I paid my last respects at his wake Saturday afternoon, I didn’t have any. I saw pictures of a long-haired high school teen, ripping out a sax solo. Next to that? A 75 year old man, a little lighter on top and larger in the middle, ripping out a sax solo. All those miles in between. All those friends. All that encouragement that he offered to me, and everybody else in his orbit. All that service to others. Always a smile. The same joy. To the very end, he was driven only by good will. It was a sad, silent drive home.

I only knew Jack for the last decade or so. But I suspect he didn’t change all that much. So part of me feels like I’ve known him forever. I’ll miss him. And a lot of others will too. May he forever rest in the bosom of the town he loved so well.

In a bit…

—tf