As usual, the bedroom TV was tuned into the morning news. We like the ambient noise as we get ready for the day, and Sunday was going to be a good one. We were going to the Puyallup Fair. We were eschewing a day of laundry and house cleaning for a few rickety rides, some awful fair food, some people watching, and some beers, of course, in the afternoon to help better digest the atmosphere, the crowds, the fact that things like deep fried butter exist and people actually eat the stuff.
We woke, thus, at 7:00, and I showered, but as I lathered up to shave, the female voice from the TV got me, “Two men died in a motorcycle accident last night…” It made me pause and with razor in hand. I walked over and sat on the edge of the bed so I could better catch the details of the story. There were images of policemen standing around a shattered motorcycle, bits here and there on the street. Seems the two men had been riding on the top floor of a park-and-ride lot on the east side and somehow had lost control of the bike and went over the edge plummeting to their deaths.
“That’s sad.”
“Yeah, it is.” I said walking back to the bathroom. The news went on to other things, but with each swipe of the blade down my cheeks, across my chin, I wondered about those two men falling, who they were, how they happened to go over the edge of the lot, what their last thoughts were. My girlfriend was right. It was sad. I couldn’t put any other word on it. We see these stories on the news of people dying in various places across the city, state, country, world, and though it is all too sad, we turn and move on. They are strangers in a snippet of news, people I will never know. I may be one of them someday, maybe even today if we have an accident on the way to the fair, and then maybe someone would go back to shaving after the details of my death were given in a sound bite. I stopped then and looked at my girlfriend.
“You okay?” she asked. She turned off the TV and walked over behind me, put her arms around my waist, her head on my left shoulder. I turned my head and got shaving cream in her hair.
“Yeah, I’m okay.” I thought I was. People die. We move on.
We finished getting ready and went to the fair then, but the first thing we saw on display just inside the entrance was a smashed car, crushed driver’s side with two black running shoes still inside, one on the driver’s seat, one on the floor. It was a warning about the dangers of texting and driving with a poster board next to the car that had pictures of the twenty-three year old woman who died while texting. She’d crossed the center line and crashed into a truck, died instantly. The woman’s name was there with her picture, but I didn’t read it. I didn’t want to know. It was only 9:30 A.M., and I was confronted with three nameless deaths. I couldn’t shake them from my mind, especially those guys on the motorcycle, so as we walked away from the display of wreckage, I had only one question, “Where’s the beer garden?”
“It isn’t open until noon.”
“Damn.”
And so the day went on. The fair went on. It was eventful, even fun. There were games in which stuffed tigers, pigs, and chili peppers were won, the laughter of rides on swings in single and double seats, kisses up high on those rides, two raspberry scones, eleven baby pigs, the worst nachos in the universe, and the beers, 2 pre and 2 post ride Shock Tops. But all the while, thoughts, thoughts of ended lives, a motorcycle smashed to bits, pieces of helmets scattered about, a girl’s slightly burnt shoes still in a crumpled car, bodies damaged and no longer breathing.
“You okay, babe.” A hug in front of the place that sold deep friend Rocky Mountain oysters.
“Yeah, I’m okay. Just keep thinking about those two guys on the motorcycle.”
She took my hand, “Let’s go home.”
“Okay.”
When we got home, I logged into Facebook thinking to upload some pictures, but I noticed a friend of mine was tagged in a post. The post was linked to a Seattle Times article, and the headline of the article made my heart sink, “Two men die after Kirkland motorcycle crash.”
Gerald Lutz and his brother Eldon had died. I didn’t know Eldon, but I’d worked with Gerald, shared beers a few times, even some karaoke. He came to my book launch party last year and posted on Facebook that he thought Horse Bite was awesome. We’d planned now and again as recently as this spring to meet for lunch or drinks but couldn’t make it work between our differing schedules. I didn’t know him that well, but from our interactions, he seemed a very genuine person, always a smile, ready for a beer with friends or a mustache in November or time with his boy, always time with his boy as seen in his Facebook posts. Last September, he encouraged me to sing a song at Hula Hula and then posted a picture of it saying far too kindly of my rendition of ‘Hello, I Love You’, “Dave, doing his thang! He rocked it too!”
So I knew Gerald. We’d shaken hands, posed for pictures, shared a few laughs and monster Hula Hula cocktails. He read my book, showed his support for it, but I didn’t know him well enough, and that is what weighs on me now.
It was ‘sad’ when it was simply someone who had died in that motorcycle accident, some unknown persons whose bodies had broken, but it had turned into something more. It was a life I knew, had known, and yet, one I didn’t. I wished I could pay tribute to it, give some deep insights into his life and character, but I only have a few memories to go on. They’d have to be enough, but maybe such things never are. How can we sum up a life in a few paragraphs and do it any justice at all? I wished I’d tried harder to make our schedules work this spring for one more beer, one more conversation. Maybe I’d have a better insight now, some unique perspective on his soul, something even those who knew him well did not have. But it didn’t happen. Our interactions were too few and brief so all I can say is this.
Gerald, you were appreciated, and you will be missed, by family and loved ones of course, but also by those people like me, those who knew you but who should have gotten to know you better, who should have made the effort, who should have realized the shortness of this life and made plans for beers happen rather than thinking next week was possible, or next month, or the next book release party because sadly, such times might never come. Hearts have a way of stopping, people and opportunities of being missed.
I logged out of Facebook, opened my Tumblr page, started writing. My girlfriend came into the bedroom with a Blue Moon for me. She’s good that way, understands me, and I her. She’s one of the few people I know well. And maybe that’s a flaw of mine, this not knowing many people well, not opening up. Maybe I’m too much of a closed book, or too stubborn, or too much a fool, or something else I can’t quite put my finger on. I took the beer. She ran her fingers though my hair. I bowed my head, closed my eyes. She scratched my scalp.
“You okay?”
“I don’t know.”
R.I.P, Gerald. See you on the other side.