A Small Tribute

I met a kindly chap at the State College Bridge Club who offered to pick me up and drop me back once a week for the game. Curious about my new friend, who has a keen mind and is no doubt an excellent bridge player, I asked him a few questions about himself. Apparently, he worked in the area of Scanning Electron Microscopy, but has been retired for nearly 15 years. His wife died about 4 years ago. As he said those words, the profound sadness in his voice - and his eyes - were tangible to me.

The building where the tournaments take place 4 times a week is strangely named "SEM ECON. BRIDGE STUDIO". I asked him what that meant... he laughed, a pleasant, warm laugh, and with a far away look explained that his wife always bantered about his work being "cheap", and a politically correct way of saying "cheap" is "economical"; hence, S.E.M. Econ. !!

The main hall is quaint, with the restrooms labelled with the cards, the Queen of Hearts and the King of Clubs respectively; a very nice library of bridge books; an ancient PC with a dot matrix printer in one corner for tracking the scores; tables, chairs and bidding boxes; and scoresheets and paintings vying for space on the walls. I walked around admiring the 20-odd paintings on the wall, undoubtedly created by the same artist; the style was unmistakable.

And I came to know that week that the paintings were made by none other than my friend's wife, who, on her death bed, expressed her wish that the world should see them. They arranged an exhibition, the venue being none other than the aforementioned bridge studio, where they had spent many a happy moment with good friends over the years. One month later, she died.

They never did take down the paintings.

The whole building, managed by my friend, seems to me like a shrine to a wife he loved very much. I've known this man for just two weeks, but I find myself deeply moved.

"Do you live alone now?" I asked.
"Yes."
"Must be boring," I quipped, a rather weak attempt at humour.
"Well... it's different... I've been married to one person all my life... but now..." he shrugged, and let the words hang. "I don't do much other than play bridge these days," he concluded after a pause.

For a moment I wanted to scream in rage at the injustice of it all. But I thought about it long and hard, and I think it was better for his wife to go the way she did, with the man she loved by her side, taking care of her while she was sick. I know she must have died with a smile on her lips, and her soul at peace. Better that than the lonely, grim, empty existence that my friend was living out.

Most of us, at this age, have not known true grief at the magnitude that death alone can bring. Of all of life's injustices, the biggest one is the simple fact that death is inevitable. Let us offer a prayer, then, for the departed. Every one of them. As a mark of respect, I am disabling comments on this post, and I request my readers to not comment on this topic anywhere else on this blog. And I sincerely hope that there is no need for me to bring up the topic of death ever again on my blog.

Cheers,
Prashanth.