Michael Reeseman

Michael has been writing music, poetry, prose, and helpful suggestions on and off for almost forty years now.   He’s finally allowing me to make some of them public.  I sincerely hope more will follow as this is just scratching the surface. 

“I feel like a song,” I said, pushing my textbooks away. “How ‘bout it?”

“Sure,” George said softly, “Why not?”

“Don’t sound so happy,” I replied. I crossed the dorm and took my place in the easy chair, leaned back and settled in. I fumbled for a playing card. George didn’t like picks.

I folded a spade and strummed a G. “Ready?”

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

We played a little Croce, then James Taylor, and into some CCR. I was halfway through McLean’s “Empty Chairs” when I got the feeling something was wrong. Was George not sounding right? It was an article of faith with me that if the music was off, it was always me, never George. I finished and sat for a few minutes to see if I could put my finger on it. I replayed some bits in my head. No, George was impeccable as usual but something was different.

“Want to play anything else?” I asked when I realized the silence had gotten uncomfortable.

“Yeah. How about that Harrison tune about guitars weeping?”

I frowned and tried to decipher his tone. It sounded both bitter and sad and that definitely wasn’t at all like him. To be sure, George was all about emotion, from heartbroken lows within some really dark places to soaring heights in Heaven’s own subdivision. But always –always— with total honesty. George didn’t do maudlin.

“Ok,” I asked finally. “What’s wrong?”

I received total silence for an answer.

“C’mon man,” I insisted. “Give.”

“It’s hard to hear.”

“We got time.”

I got the distinct impression I’d just kicked a door shut and he clammed up after that.

It’s hard to tell sometimes if George is focusing on you specifically, being blind and all. But right then I was getting the distinct impression he was “staring” at me intently. It was weird, uncomfortable, and I was just about to tell him to forget the whole thing when he broke the silence:

“We’ve been friends for some time, haven’t we?” he said with a voice like a hug you didn’t want.

“Um hmm,” I mumbled, figuring. “About six years.”

“Seven,” he corrected. A pause. The pause was beginning to stretch. We were heading somewhere and I wasn’t at all sure I was liking this trip.

“I’m dying.”

It hit me like thunder, deafening. I swear I went through every stage of grief known to man and improvised a few new ones on the fly. I circled back to denial.

“Wait a sec,” I blurted out, “You can’t die!”

“Yeah, figured you’d go with denial,” George teased dryly. “But it is what it is.”

“It’s not that,” even though it clearly was, “I didn’t think it was possible.”

George sighed. “We can, and do, die,” he explained. “But not the way you think about it.” I had to accept that. George’s kind never lie. They can’t. But that doesn’t mean we have to understand.

“If you want to sing a song,” he said gently. (Oh, so very, very, gently.) “There has to be silence, both before and after.”

The tears flowed freely from there. He let me go on until I could find my voice again.

“When?” I croaked out.

“Soon,” he replied. “Tonight.”

“Why so sudden?” I demanded way too loudly and felt like a total idiot. We waited.

“Is there anything I can do?” I pleaded, already knowing there wasn’t.

“No. But thank you,” he answered.

I mumbled something like “Don’t mention it” and lapsed into silence. I could sense George was focusing on me again but this time I didn’t feel self-conscious, just miserable and helpless. It wasn’t easy, losing a friend. At this point in my life, I’d never experienced this kind of keening loss and I prayed earnestly –if selfishly—that I’d never feel this again.

“Let me play you a song of mine,” George said, interrupting my thoughts.

I stopped thinking and started listening. George didn’t play solo very often and original compositions were rarer still. It was never something to miss.

He starting singing some sad, sleepy song that I couldn’t recognize. The melody was soothing but otherworldly, with each phrase heading off in its own direction, complementing yet erasing the previous one. It was hard to capture the rhythm; it was as irregular but yet consistent as floating along a lazy summer river on an inner tube. Even the very chords, on familiar strings and frets, managed to be alien and delightfully surprising. The strange music wove a spell around and through me and I felt the knots in my stomach and throat begin to unravel.

Despite the seriousness of the situation and my concern, I drifted off to sleep like an apostle. By the start of the second song, I was dead to the world.

***

I awoke some time later, perhaps a matter of hours. I didn’t feel as guilty as I should have. Looking back, I think he planned it that way. One last mercy for a friend.

I gazed at George. He looked different, even accounting for the early morning twilight. Something subtle but clearly changed.

I picked him up gently. My fingers formed a chord and I strummed. I felt like crying. I did, come to think of it, despite my already overworked tear ducts.

For I had heard the loneliest sound in the world. A simple chord. Crisp. In perfect tune. But that was all that I heard.

There was no voice in the vibrations, no spirit in the soundbox. George would never sing to me again, at least not in this world. I’d lost a great and true friend. And all I had left was a guitar.