DanielSonenberg.com

I am lying with Alex on an enormous king size bed in a Best Western, 100 miles south of Portland in some anonymous Massachusetts town. Now we are up. We had the pallid “continental breakfast” of saran-wrapped English muffins and apple jelly. Back up to the room, showering, using wi-fi, trying to bleed it of its $97 value. I’ve got a warm half coffee here, reminding me it’s time again to quit caffeine.

We buried Chris Hume’s ashes in The Falls yesterday. His folks and some relatives were up, and Mike Wacks and I, and Lisa and Alex – our respective better halves. We had a church service (unexpectedly very religious), an alumni brunch (it turns out actually to be our 15th reunion year), and then we trudged, in a golf cart or on foot, to that magical oasis where, 15 to 19 years previously, we celebrated many golden afternoons and shimmering evenings. We all approached the noisy drink, most of us ultimately on foot, with Chris a fine dust in a bag in a box. And before words were spoken, sentiments expressed, Chris’s folks stepped forward to the swirling, thirsty machine and emptied the contents of their bag-in-a-box. And the Falls turned gray and powdery, a cloud jolted forward toward the precipice and beyond, and I was still catching my breath and adjusting my ears to the thrashing. Next a fine bottle of white wine, a toast, back to the car, a suddenly teary farewell, and Chris’s people – with their heavy burden, in fact, only faintly lifted – commenced the long drive back to the future. The mo(u)rning went fast.

But the afternoon was a different story altogether. We piled into Wack’s black Saturn, followed our instincts to the venerable “Beverage Way” (never used to be open on Sundays), and returned to the Falls with two six packs of Genese Cream Ale (as if there were any other option).

And then we spent the remains of the day in and about the Falls, in a magical time lapsed swirl of inactivity. The Falls always had the power to eat whole days, but it was never waste, always nourishment. And yesterday was no exception. Near the stone stump that always served as our camp, we noticed some of the white boney dust that had been Chris Hume remained clustered, clinging to a rock and aglow with an other-worldly iridescence. Yes, it was the Big Chill, we were aware of it. But it was rewarding and painful and cleansing in a way that no other ritual could be. We celebrated amongst the naked post-commencement revelers, we old men, the class of ’92, dragging our creaking knees and graying heads through the slippery stones, conversing with the natives – our former selves – and taking absolution in the pounding waters, so furious and ecstatic. We passed around an ipod with Chris’s music and noise canceling headphones, and we felt, maybe ten percent of us did anyway, that no time had passed. The other ninety percent, which I’m sure included our brains, confirmed that everything had indeed changed. There was a time when ten thousand sunny sacrifices to the Falls lay before us, days offered up to the heavens in exchange for the soothing balm of timelessness and soundlessness, our barely used-up lives compact little balls of potential. Grazing that immortal feeling, ever so slightly and quickly, as we stood to remember and scatter our friend, was the bitterest of bittersweet tastes in the world. I felt remorseful for the loss of Hume, but also for the countless days I opted out of paradise, opted to study or practice or compose or just waste time in some less blissful pursuit. I felt remorse for my very oldness, for which I am in fact only partly to blame, and for every moment of my youth not spent celebrating God – this God of the sun and the smashing water and swaying leaves, that so surrounded us yesterday afternoon that it’s amazing life, in all its normalcy, goes on another day.

Ah dear Hume, we remembered you, celebrated you, bathed in you. You coursed through our veins and over our heads, massaged our backs, and gamboled forward in a violent, frenzied rush toward the beyond. Down to the basin, out to the Hudson, to the sea, the sea. We came together as friends, Wacks and I, and Kupietz, a guest by satellite, and felt the rush of your irreverent, scathing brilliance, now one with this miraculous corner of the world – this special boardroom where our lives in fact were planned – informing us of things past, and things to come. So tonight, when finally I reach my destination, as I’m sure Wacks has already reached his and you, hopefully, will reach yours soon, as Kupietz sits in Pacific contemplation and receives our digital imagery, I’ll head out to the Casco Bay and raise a plastic cup of Pernod, made white with cold water, as we did so long ago on the roof of Robbins. The past, the present, the future – all just existing at once, all of the time, in every one of us.