Howe - That this

In memory of Peter H. Hare (19352008)

It was too quiet on the morning of January 3rd when I got up at eight after a good nights sleep. Too quiet. I showered, dressed, then came downstairs and put some water on the boil for instant oatmeal. Peter always woke up very early, he would have been at work in his study, but there was no sign of his having breakfasted. I looked out the window and saw The New York Times still on the driveway in its bright blue plastic wrapper. Had he gone for a walk? I checked to see if his slippers were on the floor by the window seat where he usually left them when he went out. They werent there. Why? The water was boiling, I poured it over the cereal, stirred it, then stopped. The house was so still. I called his name. No answer. Was he sick or had he overslept? I remember thinking I shouldnt eat until I was sure he was all right. We had a running joke that at seventy anything might happen so if one of us didnt appear in the morning by nine, the other should check. I called his name again. Again, no answer. Maybe he didnt hear me because he was taking a shower. I went into his room. He was lying in bed with his eyes closed. I knew when I saw him with the CPAP mask over his mouth and nose and heard the whooshing sound of air blowing air that he wasnt asleep. No.

Starting from nothing with nothing when everything else has been said

O My Very Dear Child. What shall I say? A holy and good God has covered us with a dark cloud. On April 3, 1758, Sarah Edwards wrote this in a letter to her daughter Esther Edwards Burr when she heard of Jonathans sudden death in Princeton. For Sarah all works of God are a kind of language or voice to instruct us in things pertaining to calling and confusion. I love to read her husbands analogies, metaphors, and similes.

For Jonathan and Sarah all rivers run into the sea yet the sea is not full, so in general there is always progress as in the revolution of a wheel and each soul comes upon the call of God in his word. I read words but dont hear God in them.

On the morning of January 2nd, we took the train into Manhattan to be part of my sons noon wedding at City Hall. That afternoon we couldnt find seats together on the crowded peak hour Metro North from Grand Central so we sat apart. It was dark when we arrived at New Haven and crossed the track for the Shoreline connection to Guilford. When we got off I walked quickly across the parking lot to the car. He followed more slowly. I wondered why, but it was so cold I didnt bother to look back. At home we cooked up some vegetables and pasta. After dinner he said he was tired and would go straight to bed.

Oh that we may kiss the rod, and lay our hands on our mouths! The Lord has done it. He has made me adore his goodness, that we had him so long. But my God lives; and he has my heart. We are all given to God: and there I am, and love to be. I admire the way thought contradicts feeling in Sarahs furiously calm letter.

We cant be limited to just this anxious life.

Somewhere I read that relations between sounds and objects, feelings and thoughts, develop by association; language attaches to and envelopes its referent without destroying or changing itthe way a cobweb catches a fly.

Nowputting bits of memory together, trying to pick out the good while doing away with the badIm left with one overwhelming impressionthe unpresentable violence of a negative double.

He was lying with his head on his arm, the way I had often seen him lie asleep. I thought of Steerforths drowned body in David Copperfield, also the brutality of sending young children away to boarding school in order to forge important ties for future life. Though Steerforth is a sadistic character his perfect name forms a second skin. Something has to remain to rest a soul against stone.

The CPAP mask was over his face because he had sleep apnea, a disorder characterized by pauses in breathing during sleep. When the mask is plugged in and running, pressure greater than the surrounding atmosphere is enough to keep the upper airways from becoming narrowed or blocked. If he felt anything unusual, surely he would have tried to remove the cumbersome thing. It was still running in place and fogged up.

Land of darkness or darkness itself you shadow mouth.

A cold clear day. Im at the computer in his study deleting spam, saving folders and e-mails for the Transactions of the C. S. Peirce Society: A Quarterly Journal in American Philosophy, a magazine he co-edited for many years. I scroll to mail dated 1/2/08. Theres a note from a colleague concerning the annual meeting of the eastern division of the American Philosophical Association in Baltimore they attended the week before. We all need quiet time now after the busy fallShannon.

That night or was it early morning, Peter took eternal wordlessness into himself.

Some paperwhites he loved to plant and bring to flower are thriving in our living room. Paperwhites are in the daffodil family so have their sweet spring scent. Blooming in winter they represent happiness that costs next to nothing simply by receiving the suns brightness, repose and harmony. On the computer screen I find a short essay he was writing on poetry and philosophy but never showed me. Theres a letter to his first wifes brother, signed, Peter and Sukey. I wish we were Hansel and Gretel with pebbles as a hedge against the day before and the day after.

Once you admit that time past is actually infinite, being a child gradually fades out.

Looking over autobiographical fragments he wrote during the years following his first wifes death every one of them begins with his shock at her absence. If you looked through my papers until now, you would find a former dead husband at the center. We had almost stopped needing to summon the othersnot quite. Not if you rely on written traces.

Fallible and faithfulwhat makes loyalty so righteous in measurable space? Forever following a river to the ramparts where they form a single plume in the center we are together in our awareness of the great past founded by Daphne and David. Everything appears in a deliberately constructed manner as if the setting of our story was always architectural.

At any rate. Time and again you repeated this phrase. Often you had a hard time touching down in conversationwaving your arms and going off on tangents before coming the long way round to where you started. Bang for the buck. I was impatient with your verbal tics. All squared away. Now I would turn to listen with elation.

Today I found I had forgotten to pay the land tax due the first of January so theres an added punishment fee of one hundred and twenty-six dollars. If only we could return to December so I could let you know I needed you because I know you needed to be needed

as vast a need as at this moment.

You can save moneyits to save you.

The imposing front door of Peters large house in the Central Park section of Buffalo was simple mahogany with a polished brass knocker at its center. Shortly after we met he said why dont you just leave your rented place and come live with me here. In a primogenial sense it was the first wifes territory. I didnt share her taste. Nevertheless, old family oil portraits, various objects from the China Trade, engravings of genteel nineteenth-century Episcopalian ministers, and over the dining room table a painting of The US Squadron Commanded by Comd. S. Rodgers sailing from Port Mahon. Respectfully dedicated to M. C. Perry Esq. of the U.S.N. by his most obt. Servant S. Cabrolla, Gibralta, 10 May 1826 in its solid wood frame beckoned me into an environment where ancestors figured as tender grass springing out of the earth. There they were, saying Susan, child of our history, come home, come on in.