Ode to Philip

Everyone we meet leaves an effect on us.  How profound is usually dependent upon the initial meeting, the chemistry between the two individuals, a tie that binds.  If we’re lucky, we have at least one heart connection in our lives.  I’ve been blessed many times over, as I have heart connections.  None, however, were ever as great as the heart connection I shared with Philip.

From our first meeting, there’s nothing about me he doesn’t know.  Okay, so most of it was learned through surveillance, but I told him everything about my life, anyway.  And he told me of his life.

I never found this odd, he and I.  It was simply Philip.  The fact that he’d find a way to contact me, 30 years ago, from the other side of the world, never seemed strange. The fact that he showed up, unexpected and unannounced, at my graduation, didn’t feel out of place.  And the fact that he was always in my thoughts, my conversations, never felt weird, only right.

I learned a lot from Philip, although not the things he wanted to teach me.  I learned I have the capacity to hate.  That surprised me.  Not dislike, but hate, loathe, despise, with a fervor near biblical in its proportions.  And it was born, this hate, out of protective love.  A girl way back in Philip’s past, a friend of mine I’d introduced to Philip, hurt him.  With deliberate intent, and great malice.  I shunned her – even after Philip forgave her, even after he let her back into his world.  That was the first time I understood the comment ‘you’re dead to me’.  Who knew that I, good little church-going Christian girl, could hate so fully?  Not me.  Even now, all these years later, I refuse to speak to her.  Petty?  Perhaps.  But ever loyal to the one I love.

I learned of darkness – the darkness that steals hope, blots out all light.  Philip would call when he was lost, when his well had nothing left.  For hours we would talk, both of us revealing the truest self we have, in the black of night.  When he would get lost, I could only listen.  Hold the phone in such a manner that he never heard my tears, and pour all the love I had into my voice, to bring him home.  He called me his light – he held me up, he kept me close.  It was through his taking of my hand, leading me into the black, that allowed me an understanding of a world I’ve never seen, a life I’ve never lived.  Except through Philip.

When my second marriage fell apart, and sleep became a nebulous thing, I turned to Philip.  At first we would talk – but then I found I had nothing left to say, yet didn’t want to be alone in the dark.  So began another chapter of my life with Philip – he would read to me.  Charles DeWitt was his author of choice.  I’d snuggle into my bed, arm around the stuffed moose given me by my daughter years ago, hand against the phone, holding it tight to my ear, and he would begin.

You would think a man whose entire life was formed in the military, from the time he could walk, would sound gruff, hard, even.  No; Philip had the perfect storyteller voice.  Diction clear, concise, tone pitched low in the mid-range, weighing each word carefully, to ensure the listener understood.  I was almost always asleep before the end of the second page.  And next time I phoned him for a story, we’d begin again.  He never grew annoyed; just kept reading.

He would speak with clinical exactness of weapons – any weapon, any era, its accuracy, effectiveness, etc., until I could listen no more.  Yet he would speak with equal exactness of the railroad lines running through Hocking County, the glaciers that formed the southern area of Ohio in which he finished his life, the flora and fauna, the wildlife indigenous to the area.  In either conversation, he would be animated, excited, eager to share.  For the world never ceased to amaze Philip – the beauty and the wonder that was offered up on a platter, every single day, fascinated and humbled him.  I would ask what he was doing, and his answer would invariably be, sittin’ on the porch, watchin’ the pine trees grow.

He’d reached a place of acceptance – of his life, his place in the world.  He’d found a community that accepted him – respected him.  And that continued to be a mystery to him…he was The Gunsmith, and he belonged to Hocking County.

He left us knowing he was loved, knowing he was respected, knowing he was part of a larger community.  Knowing he wasn’t alone.

And he left a huge vacancy in my life, one I despair of ever filling.

Rest, Sweet Boy…