Kindest heart

Well.  At the rate I'm going, by the time the Lookout Mountain Convention and the memorial for Jerry come around in a week and a half, I'm going to be crying every waking hour.  Only a slight exaggeration, possibly.  I walk into the shop, I start crying - it's what happens.  I get through it, some time goes by, I start crying again.  I went in this morning and gathered some things and brought them home - tools, utensils, a desk lamp I remember carting along Broadway to my apartment on 73rd Street from Pottery Barn (which Jerry called "Poetry Barn" for no reason except he liked doing it), before I met Jerry or had any clue that someday it would be lighting an office in a cabinet shop in Illinois.  The electric kettle for my tea.  The serving spoon with which Jerry meticulously divvied up the Tasty Bite entrees we'd share for lunch sometimes (or not so meticulously - I always suspected he gave me the larger portion and would often call him out about it, and he'd always deny it).  The map of Ireland I'd picked up during our honeymoon, with the ads for touristy things like Bunratty all over it (typing "Bunratty" makes me realize Jerry must have loved that name.  It just has the kind of sound he would have found amusing).  The Old New York calendar I got every year, this year's with a gastroenterologist appointment for Jerry written in on 15 January, the appointment that had the gastroenterologist who hadn't found anything three months earlier scheduling Jerry for a sigmoidoscopy the following Monday.  And no further medical appointments for Jerry written in anywhere - I refused to mark a single oncology appointment anywhere in any calendar.  (And we know what happens to me when I come across them written in Jerry's calendars.)

I found myself thinking "Oh, better take my sander - I'm going to need my sander."  Then thinking - for what?  For all those cabinet parts I'll never be sanding again?  I took my sander anyway (last of a long line of Bosch sanders - they do have a limited lifespan, those sanders.  Or I'm just really hard on them).  And sanding disks for it.  Because, of course, when Jerry gives me work to do, I'll need to be ready.

Seamus had someplace to be, so we called the lawyer, told him to go ahead and start sending out letters to creditors telling them Wood Bros. has ceased operations, and then we left.  I'll go back tomorrow and we'll see about what to do with all the papers - or try to figure it out, anyway.  And see if there's anything else I should take out of there.  And cry some more.

I was looking at the PC in the basement - Jerry's first computer, I think it might be, an old DOS machine that uses those big floppy disks.  So far I haven't figured out how to turn it on, or if it's plugged in, and since we're getting on to 20 years or more since I've used a computer anything like that, I'm not sure if I can even figure it out.  I was thinking I should take it to the annual electronics recycling thing the village does, which is this coming Saturday (I remember us driving a bunch of old computers and other things over to it last year), but now I'm thinking I won't rush - I don't know if there's anything important on there, and considering the amount of dust and cobwebs on the thing, I imagine not, but I'll take my time, see if I can turn it on, and see if there is anything that shouldn't be tossed.

On the table with the computer I found Jerry's 1987 edition of the Sacred Harp - I guess I never thought about the fact that when he started singing, it was before the 1991 edition came out, but the 1971 edition that I got in 1983 was I guess superseded by the 1987 reprint, so that's what he has.  Had.  Raised sixths, not that Jerry's patient repetitions of what that means have ever gotten me understanding quite what goes on in those, are circled in many of the songs; there's a comment on how 29t is sung "at Antioch" (with no loss of time); a flyer for a singing in 1992 is folded in between two of the pages.  Jerry Enright as Sacred Harp beginner, already paying attention to the traditional ways and making note of them, as he began to try to carry them on himself.  Oh, and most noteworthy, there's a yellow post-it on page 77, with "77 top" written on it.  Jerry's song.  I wonder if he put that there the first time he heard it sung.  (I also wonder how the book ended up covered in dust in the basement - I suspect he forgot it was there, since the rest of his tunebooks, except for the 1991 edition, are all upstairs.  The basement computer table was something he was used to from his former life, and when I convinced him after not too long that it really made no sense to sit in a dank basement when we had two extra bedrooms upstairs, and he turned the one into his thangka-hung Buddha bedroom, the old computer and the things around it were mostly forgotten, I think.)

I also found a printed 2002 e-mail from Doyle Ashley, the son of the late Barrett Ashley, one of the traditional singers Jerry admired and became friends with.  Jerry interviewed Mr. Ashley before his death in 1997 - I helped him transcribe the interview and was sorry never to have met Mr. Ashley.  Jerry modeled his own leading of 300 and 383 on Mr. Ashley's style.  Anyway, Jerry had asked Doyle for his wife's recipe for marinated bean salad, and Doyle sent it along in this e-mail.  I don't think Doyle would mind if I quoted his words here:

Hey Jerry and Karen,
So good to see the both of you at Pine Grove and the Lookout Mountain Singing Convention... Jerry, we (all of those who have heard and enjoyed the interview with "Mr. Barrett." also daddy) thank you so much for doing the interview with someone who is so special to us, and then providing us with a CD from that interview.  We know that you love fasola singing, but more importantly you have a kind heart and a genuine interest in your fellow man.

I have to agree with Doyle.  Jerry had the kindest heart I've ever known.