11
Jun
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We buried my friend Mark B. I’ll miss him. His graciousness, kindness, thoughtfulness and above all his wonderful brightness and sense of humor made him a very special person. I met him only after AIDS had started its insidious ravaging of his body. But it also afforded him some of his happiest years.Mark’s first and greatest love was music. Form his earliest years he doted on sitting at a keyboard—piano or organ particularly. During his teen years he was organist at a couple of churches. He spent a few years as a Jesuit, using and developing his musical talents in the service of his community. But after leaving the seminary and going into banking, the temporal and economic demands of earning a living kept him
from music.
Then he found he was HIV positive. When the onset of AIDS rendered him unable to hold a job, he figured his creative days were over. Then one day he accompanied a friend to services at a church in Boston’s South End, not far from Mark’s apartment. The church had been for a short time without an organist and one of the staff asked Mark if he would substitute. For the first time in eight years he sat at an organ and thus began a new life. Mark’s need and the church’s need fit like hand and glove. The church had a new organist and Mark found his vocation again.Mark could be found in the old cavernous church almost every day of the past few years, playing the organ. On cold winter days he kept a jacket and scarf on, while a space heater gave off a little heat behind him. Mark loved to play classical music, and the huge church reverberated to the old melodies. But some of the best sounds were those of Mark’s own composition—sounds from his own heart. He was back in his element. Mark had found a bit of heaven on earth.AIDS was not kind to Mark, but he didn’t complain. Since the advent of my own terminal cancer, we found another common bond, and often compared notes on each other’s progress, or lack of it. We walked together on this journey.
I had always thought that people, when told that life was approaching its end, lived on “hold†in a sort of limbo, simply waiting for death. But Mark is one of many friends I now have for whom, like the wine at the famous wedding feast at Cana, the best was saved till last. I’m not sure of all the reasons, but I think that when we’re told we’re not going to blow out too many birthday candles, we’re able to focus on the real priorities and screen out the unimportant and the trivial. We then can say yes to what we really want to do, and see burdensome things like work and money and grudges and sadness and worries for what they are.I’m tempted to say that I wish I had known Mark earlier, but I had the blessing of knowing him at his best, at his happiest. For the rest of my days, whenever I enter the quiet of the Jesuit Urban Center, I’ll hear the echoes of his music.
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