Saturday was sort of strange to begin with. Even though I had been up a bit late on Friday night, I awoke at sunrise and made some Mocha Java coffee. While sipping my hot brew, I thought about what the day would hold. In another five hours I’d be over at some friends’ house cooking up my usual storm. They were having a graduation party for their young daughter. Katie is nearing eighteen and had managed to distinguish herself in English composition. She already appeared in National Geographic several years ago due to her having a personal website. Astounding nearly everyone at school, most likely including herself, she had managed to find all sixteen editing issues in her final examination’s test passage. Not even her teacher suspected that she would go everybody a step better and find another error that no one else had spotted.
She proudly displayed her achievement certificate on Friday. I’d gone over to help with the party’s preparations that evening. Between folding dolmades for the next day’s party, I was also grilling rib-eye steaks for some dinner sandwiches. While making the garlic bread and Feta salad, I was dragged out of the kitchen and seated around a digital mixing deck as Katie, her father, several friends and my Shanghaied self all read a slightly modified script of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. It was Katie’s extra credit project for her English class and she was putting the wraps on it in preparation for graduation. I relieved my parched script-reading throat by hoisting a shot of Balvenie Doublewood in a toast to Lynn Bodoni’s health. That done, I trotted back into the kitchen.
To give you an idea of their residence, it is a not-so-tidy older tract home in an unincorporated area amid the heart of San Jose near the City College. Something that I have always admired about their house is how, for every inch of television screen diagonal in their living room, there is probably about one hundred inches of book spines on their library shelves. Many people simply stop and gape at the few thousand books that line the front rooms. The lady of the house and I have always gotten on well because we both share a passion for collecting cookbooks. She has a few hundred of them in a corner near the kitchen. In a China hutch is a what appears to be an inverted punch bowl. It is really the external canopy for a Norden bombsight. Katie’s grandfather contributed to the development of this critical war time technology that helped the Allies prevail. It sits surrounded by pewter dragons and other Pagan curios. I once had a chance to meet him and was also able to express gratitude for his help in designing the Perkin Elmer Lambda 9 UV-Vis-Near IR spectrophotometer. I used one in my thin film work on magneto-optic erasable CD technology back in the eighties.
As you can see, this house has many odd and obscure links into and back out of my life in Silicon Valley. On Saturday it was business as usual. After visiting the message boards, I trundled over to their house and began working on the party food. First were the lamb ribs with a Middle Eastern cinnamon, sugar and sea salt garlic dry rub. After they went on a shelf above the grill, the real work began. I clabbered together two kilos of ground lamb into a monster batch of soujouk, a fabulous Arabic sausage kebab (and Katie’s favorite barbecue dish). My friend, Nasif, at his wonderful falafel shack had finally broken down and given me the recipe. It consisted of; “Add pepper, salt, garlic powder and allspice to the meat, Chris.” That was it, no measurements or quantities. I finally inveigled one gauge of preparation from him. Add enough allspice to noticeably color the meat. That’s what I had to go on.
Once the sausage meat was worked over, I began on the two salsas. For my friend Nasif there was the roasted red pepper and red Jalapeño salsa rojo. For his brother, William (the chile addict), I fixed a salsa brava of red Jalapeño combined with much hotter red Serrano chiles. William is the type who can spoon down my agent orange Habanero salsa and just grin like a skunk eating you-know-what. He was long ago hooked on the endorphin rush from scarfing down mass quantities of capsicum. I brought them each a jar of special request salsas and traded hostages for their fabulous hummus and tabouleh. I paused to shake hands with the ever-gentle Nasif and told him what a good boss he most likely was and how nice it would be to work for him. He didn’t even blink before correcting me and saying, "No Chris, work with me, not for me. That’s the kind of good hearted man he is. Many’s the time I’ve brought a friend to his restaurant for lunch and had him refuse any attempt to pay for it.
Dashing back to the party with my ill gotten gains, I rescued the scorched lamb ribs and began warming up the dolmades from last night. There were only a few dozen left over from the depredations of last evening’s Shakespeare crew. Parking the stuffed grape leaves among the Humbolt Fog creamy blue goat cheese, the Dubliner and Irish Cheddar, the firm Dutch Akina goat cheese and the ubiquitous Stilton hunter’s multilayer wedge, I took time to sip on a fantastic Yugoslavian plum liqueur I had never tasted before. Now came the dirty work. Every time we had this dish before, Nasif had been kind enough to mix up the meat for me. This time I was working without a net. Forming up small narrow logs of the soujouk, I threaded them onto the soaked bamboo skewers and headed for the grill. Barely could I get the finished product onto the table before the ravening hoard picked them clean. To my own delight, the host declared this first-shot-out-of-locker recipe test a complete win.
Somewhere around 6:30PM my feet began to loudly assail my senses. Standing almost continuously for the past seven hours had finally taken its toll and I was obliged to make a run for the barn. On the way home I thought about my friend J.B.. He was in the hospital for kidney failure and it was unlikely that he would receive a life saving organ donation any time soon. I had gone to visit him less than a week ago. My heart leapt into my throat when I had seen his empty room. I inquired at the nurse’s station and eventually was told that he had been moved downstairs. He had been found unconscious in his bed and transferred to ICU for closer monitoring. I went down and asked after him and was informed that he could be visited in another twenty minutes.
As with my previous visit, I headed up the street to buy some flowers for J.B.'s room. On my way to the store, I dropped by the small burger shack run by his friends. J.B. and I found cooking and music to be a deep bond between us. He had been helping a young Vietnamese couple to start up their restaurant, advising them on standard American burger combinations and milkshake flavors. I knew that they would be concerned about him and dropped in to let them know that his condition had deteriorated. As before, they instantly offered me a free milkshake to take over to him. The first time I had visited him, I had snuck in a small cup of his favorite hot fudge malted vanilla milkshake. Under my stern supervision I had let him gobble up all of three spoonfuls and then promptly washed the rest of it down the sink. However much I was willing to take pity upon his wailing about the bland hospital food, I wasn’t going to send him into glycemic shock feeding him a full cup of milkshake.
This time there was not going to be any milkshake. J.B. was in ICU and there was no way in Hell I was going to interfere with the doctor’s prescribed diet. Instead, I did the same as last time and asked his friends at the burger shack to write down a few get well messages on one of their order slips so I could carry that back to his hospital bed. I stopped off at the store and picked up a dozen purple carnations on my way back to visit him. I came into his ICU room to find him amid more tubes and electronics than an antique short-wave radio. He was in pretty rough shape when I got him to wake up. His lucidity was marginal but he finally recognized me and was overjoyed that I had shown up. The kindly RN on the floor brought in his flowers and taped the get well note from his friends onto the vase. J.B. was being transferred back upstairs later that day and everyone wanted to make sure the note wouldn’t get lost. I joked with nurse Butt (her real name) that she really ought to be in the proctology department. We all had a laugh and J.B. started to tell me about how the flowers reminded him of his favorite bonsai work that he had been doing in recent times.
I held his hand while we talked and let him know about the good things happening to me. I told him about all the love I had experienced with the Burning Man camp group at their fundraising party. I tried to tell him about how even more love had been flowing into my life lately as he began to slip in and out of lucid thought. I bent over and hugged him good-bye when the doctor came in to begin his transfer upstairs. I thanked the staff for their tender mercies shown to my friend and drove home in a somber mood.
So it was too while driving home from the party yesterday. As I sat at the steering wheel my thoughts drifted back to J.B.'s medical condition. I was faced with the bleak and undeniable impression that he was not going to get out of the hospital. I can’t really say why the thought occurred to me. I know enough about medicine to understand how critical kidney transplants were going to be if J.B. was ever to have a normal life again. I also knew that no such thing was on the horizon. These were the thoughts I mulled over as I drove home.
Staggering into the house on my weary feet, I saw the message light blinking on the answer beast. Pushing the “play” button, I heard our friend Chris’ sad voice tell me that J.B. was dead. He rattled off the street address of a house in Los Gatos and mentioned a four o’clock starting time. With the wind knocked out of me, I donned my hat once more, grabbed my flute and snagged a bottle of peach sparkler on my way out the door. As I arrived in Los Gatos, another musician was unloading a bass and guitar from her car. I helped her cart a PA system and her amplifier up the hill and we both walked in on a huge throng. Nearly everyone that J.B. knew for the last two decades or longer had shown up. His old friend J.C. was leading his own band through a blues set on his vintage Les Paul electric guitar as I began to assemble my flute. I pulled a beer off the ice and fortified myself with a shot of brandy before getting waved up on stage. We rambled through another blues number and J.C. called up a female vocalist to join all of us.
We launched into a fast shuffle of Van Morrison’s “Moondance” and cranked down on some heavy solos while the sun began to drop towards the tree covered Santa Cruz Mountains that J.B. had spent his youth wandering through. The song finished and I jumped off the stage only to look around at several more guitars, a mandolin and more musicians than I could count. I knew that this party wasn’t going to end any time soon and scooted back up to my car. I made it back to my house in record time and grabbed some harmonicas and my alto saxophone. Heading back up into the mountains above Los Gatos, tendrils of mist were curling over the ridge line’s treetops and the sun was reddening on its way to the horizon.
As I walked back up to the party I heard this prayer being led.
Using my Stentorian voice to good end, I rallied the crown with three cheers for J.B. Then other people took the microphone and began to reminisce about knowing him. Old room mates and even older friends spoke of knowing him. Eventually, I stepped up and decided it was time to leaven things a tiny bit. Since J.B. and I had met at an open microphone performance over ten years ago, I recited a poem I had learned at one of the events I used to produce. It is called, “The Raven’s Story”. With everyone’s spirits lightened except mine the recollections continued. An old friend finally brought up his bluegrass band and the sound of guitar (J.B.'s favorite instrument), mandolin and electric bass began to fill the twilight air.
The sun was dipping behind the mountains when the bluegrass stopped. I decided it was time for another tune and played Claude Bolling and Jean Pierre Rampal’s “Irelandaise” from the immortal album, “Suite for Jazz Flute and Piano.” I left the stage and asked another musician if he would be kind enough to lend me his guitar later. He did not hesitate to loan me his vintage Martin, this was the sort of kinship felt by everyone. I wandered around and nibbled on the wild boar that had been served. Other people played some more music and J.C.'s band finally set back up for another round.
Armed with my trusty alto saxophone, I sat in with the gang and we romped through some lively blues numbers. A fabulous female electric guitarist spiced up the mix with her excellent vocals and the party was rocking along once more. The tenor saxophonist and I traded off licks and there were solos aplenty as the band cranked through another set. I abandoned the stage and showed another beer who was at the top of the food chain. I stopped and talked with Chris, thanking him for calling me about the party. Silicon Valley’s flower power elite were in force that night. Present were two direct descendants of Doctor Robert Goddard, the father of American rocketry. A son of Neal Cassidy was playing up on stage while we watched the sixties brought back to life as everyone shared hugs and the moment’s spirit. On an easel was a photograph of J.B. taken exactly 20 years ago to the day. J.B. loved Van Gogh and had done computer animations of his paintings. There beneath his smiling photo was a vase of blue irises, just like in his favorite picture.
A couple more sax and flute numbers ran by the boards as the band and I wound down the evening. The music finally stopped and I knew it was time for my own good-bye to J.B… I borrowed a guitar and played my own song called “Tibetan Sutra.” Its name comes from “The Tibetan Book of the Dead.” This is one of the few documents ever written that deals specifically with how to help someone make the transition for life without fear or sorrow. Here are the lyrics I sang:
Tibetan Sutra
We must not be afraid,
of letting go our friends.
We must know that we will,
find them in the end.
They’re always there,
in our hearts and in our minds.
They give us something new,
each day for us to find.
Chorus
And, though we know,
that these things, they all are true.
Yet, we still act as though,
all this we never knew.
It’s hard to show,
just what life, means to me.
('cause) There’s so far to go,
and so much that we can be.
We must not worry over,
things we cannot change.
Only that which hurts is that which,
we must rearrange.
Take not for granted (that),
there’ll be more time to pass.
Make sure that all you give,
is all that’s meant to last.
Chorus
And so we learn to fight,
the darkness in our lives.
We learn to keep the flame,
by which all life survives.
And, though we’ll never be,
the same as yesterday.
Time will never change the meaning,
of these words I say…
(Time will never change the meaning,
of this song I play.)
Chorus
We must not be afraid,
of letting go our friends.
We must know that we will,
find them in the end.
(Aren’t) they always there,
in our hearts and in our minds?
They give us something new,
each day for us to find.
Chorus
And, though we know,
that these things, they all are true.
Yet, we still act as though,
all this we never knew.
It’s hard to show,
just what life, means to me.
('cause) There’s so far to go,
and so much that we can be.
(yes) There’s so far to go,
and so much that we can be.
There’s so far to go,
and so much that we can be.
The clock was striking ten as I took the stage. When I was finished, the host announced that it was time to move the music inside. We had just been visited by the local constabulary. They told the host the music being played was really pretty but that they were obliged to request for it to be turned down.
We retired inside and people traded off at the grand piano. I accompanied some classical music and others jammed on guitar. After a while, I sat down at the bench and tickled the ivories for a while too.
I know one thing deeply in my heart. If J.B.'s soul was able to look down upon all that had gone on that day, he was surely smiling.
All the cooking for Katie’s party would merely have made him laugh out loud.
All the music that was played in his honor would have made his eyes dance.
I will never see his eyes dance or hear him laugh again, for he is gone from this mortal coil. I can only continue to do what I love to do and strengthen my memory of him.
It turns out that J.B. died less than twenty-four hours after I had last visited him. He had another stroke so severe that it flattened his EEG. His friends and family gathered in his hospital room and made arrangements with the doctors. J.B. had been declared clinically dead on three other occasions during his life. This time, there would be no reversal of that misfortune. Friends brought in a stereo and played all of his most favorite Beatles albums in the order of their release.
He slipped away, surrounded by his oldest friends while “Come Together” was playing.
I shall now leave for a friend’s house. I will bring with me a bottle of Maker’s Mark bourbon and a three pack of New York steaks. One more time, I’ll cook up a storm and toast J.B.'s memory as I and some strangers he never knew all celebrate his life, his love of cooking and his love of music. I’ll sing my friends “Tibetan Sutra” if I can make my way through it.
Good-bye J.B., may your music play forever in all of our hearts.
Zenster
[typing through tears]
