Missing Tennessee Ken

It was one year ago today that Kenny left.  I wrote the following just around midnight of the 31st.  I'm just getting the chance to post it today, which is fitting, somehow.
 
My campmates pulled in tonight around five, just after sunset.  They had a spot of car trouble on the way, when Vanessa the Volvo threw a code demanding transmission service.  They had overnighted in Ontario, and went to the local Volvo dealership for a check.  They didn’t find much help there, and decided to push on and hope for the best.  At least they made it in time so we could spend New Year’s Eve together.

Things are rockin’ at the Range, but none of us really felt like trekking out there, so we stayed at the fire.  One by one, people said their goodnights until there were only four of us left, and then just three.  We looked at the stars, found the dippers (even the little one), traced the Milky Way, noted Orion spread eagled out over the bowl of the night, and watched as several balloon ascensions were sent into the sky by means of a flame source attached to a plastic bag.  The rumor is that a nest of Canadians across the way is responsible.  These things were striking as they lofted up into the sky, tacking across our position in Area  10, getting higher and higher and finally fading into the distance or winking out when the flame expired.  It reminded me of the time my brother and I read instructions on how to do this out of a book entitled Smokestack El Dopo’s Bedside Reader.  It was a Rolling Stone publication from the seventies, and detailed all kinds of mildly revolutionary stoner amusements.  We tried to launch one from the backyard of our parents’ house and almost burned down the neighbor’s when a gust sent it back down toward the roof of the house next door. While I stood in mute paralysis, my brother scrambled over the fence and got the thing extinguished.  Lesson learned:  don’t set these things off in crowded suburbia.  Which is another strike against suburbia, in my opinion.

Tonight the flaming UFO’s flew high and clear of everyone's camp.

I’ve been taking Ken’s chair out to the fire in the evenings instead of my own, and wearing his coat.  A camper gave me a bottle of wine that she didn’t plan on finishing, and I’d propped it up in the chair when I went to stand on the other side of the fire to momentarily escape the smoke.  I looked through the flames and it seemed a fitting memorial, the chair empty but for the bottle, and it made me smile. I could almost see him sitting there, leaning forward a little the way he did, taking a sip of his ever present drink out of a red Solo Cup.  There actually was a red Solo Cup sitting in the cup holder of the little fold out table attached to the chair.  The person who made dinner tonight had used them to serve the wine.  And I remembered the night last year when we all sang “Red Solo Cup!  I fill you up! . . ." around the fire and Ken had told us about how he had first heard that song while holding a red Solo cup in his hand.

My glance kept going to the Tennessee Saloon, ragged and lonely in the spot next to where Ken’s van had been parked.  I remembered how we laughed and laughed, far into the night.  I remember looking through the back doors of his van straight into the red ball of the rising sun, the air suffused with warmth and red light in the moments after his heart stopped, and the sure knowledge that came to me that this was exactly how it was meant to be, and  that I had to let him go.

I am glad I’m here again.  I’m glad I’ve made it back to the Slabs with KD at last.  But there is a gap, an empty place, something missing.  People have left, have moved on, and maybe they would have anyway, but maybe they’d still be here if he was too.  Tonight it hits me harder than it has in quite a while.  I miss him, and each reminder makes my heart cramp up a little.  But perhaps that’s not such a terrible thing.  For the sorrow that came with his passing was an almost sweet sadness, uncomplicated and undemanding.  And the tears that I shed then were like a good rain, diluting somewhat the raging grief of another loss that had been weighing me down.  Such loss as that earlier one is not overcome in a day, a year, or even two years.  But life conspires to send things, good and bad and often both at the same time, so that new road is laid down over the old and the wheels keep turning, and life goes on.

Still, I miss him.  Damn it, Ken.  I told you you’d only break my heart . . .

As I type this midnight has come and gone.  They are still going hard at the Range, I can hear the music warbling across the desert.  My bed is made and waiting, everyone else in camp has gone to bed and their rigs are all dark and quiet.  So I’ll raise my glass alone for a final toast: 

To absent friends.