Sloane had no family; only his colleagues and a few people from town gathered around the narrow pit and listened in awe, embarrassment, and respect as the minister said his words. And because he had no family and loved ones to mourn his passing, it was Stoner who wept when the casket was lowered, as if that weeping might reduce the loneliness of the last descent. Whether he wept for himself, for the part of his history and youth that went down into the earth, or whether for the poor thin figure that had once kept the man he loved, he did not know.
John Williams, Stoner, p. 89,
Many years ago now, on the day I was signing my first contract to teach full time at a small liberal arts college somewhere north of New York City, my father died. In truth he died before I left the city that morning. Strangely enough, I had woken up almost an hour before my alarm was set to go off. The time, 6:17 AM, later proved to be the time he died. That morning I thought it strange to wake up so spontaneously and so early when I usually needed more than one alarm to reach me. But I did not know as I set out for my glorious day that there was this shadow behind me.
At the college I met the members of the department, and sat down to have a good conversation with its senior member, a wonderful, brilliant, funny, strange and somewhat mad Socratic figure of a man named James Day. We hit it off at once and I returned to the city somewhat triumphantly. On the way home from the train station I stopped at my local pub for a celebratory pint. Unasked, the bartender poured me a shot of whiskey, then stood in front of me to pour a second, and a third. I looked at him.
'Call your mother,' he said.
The only grieving I knew then was to mourn outwardly, grim-faced and inky-cloaked. I was, so I thought, the one who had to be strong for everyone else. We had a wake for my father, and then buried him funeral in the fitting, cold, pouring rain of early March. We went on. In the fall I went off to begin teaching. James Day, though nothing like my father, became a surrogate. He was so much that my father was not. To begin with, we could talk about Greek together, and did at great length in the campus cafe, in the pub, at his home, in restaurants over a meal. We spent a great many hours together, and I came to love him very much.
A few years later I moved on to another small liberal arts college even further north. One day that winter a phone call came -- I am no longer sure from whom -- to tell me that James had died. His health had long been terrible, and he refused to change the way he lived. Perhaps he thought it would have made no difference, but I don't think he wanted it to. The news brought down a terrible silence within me. I went outside to split some firewood for the woodstove, since it seemed I needed something to do.
In time I realized I was weeping as I set up the wood and let the axe fall, and set up the next piece and let the axe fall again. I did not know who I was weeping for, whether for James or for my father, for myself or for us all. The tears all flowed together. I don't think I have ever wept so long.
A year or so later I met one of James' sons, and from what James had once told me I believed there had been some estrangement between them. Yet one night in his house James had shown me videos of this son performing various impressive feats on a skateboard. Never had I heard James so purely delighted for so long. He laughed and he smiled and he beamed. I made a point of telling his son that because I knew James never could, or at least that he never had. To me it seemed that his son was moved to hear of his father's delight and pride. I was moved to tell him. Because we too often say what we shouldn't to those we love and too seldom say what we should. But mostly it becomes too late to say anything and we can only weep without knowing who we are weeping for.
