Bill Flynn. RIP

I woke up this morning grateful for another day of living in this mad, perplexing and fast evolving reality we call the modern age.

Bill Flynn didn’t wake up today.

He died in his sleep… the best way to go for those who are the best.

After hearing the news of Bill Flynn’s passing on into another part of Quantum space at the ripe old age of 58 in this one, the solemn tones of the reporter changed into an angry snarl as he broadcast that Robert Mc Bride [a local chief of police] had allegedly stated that he would enter the homes of his enemies, rape and then kill their wives, burn their homes, kill their dogs and … I don’t remember what was supposed to happen to the children. I thought how Bill would have loved to play Robert Mc Bride making those alleged statements. How hysterically we would have laughed.

The announcer stated that Bill’s son had found his dad dead in bed; and it reminded me that it was 29 years ago this week, that I saw my own father died in his box. Someone had shaved off his moustache and revealed a man I didn’t know. I wondered since what dreams he had, what aspirations, what disappointments… Had he died fulfilled?

Bill Flynn devoted his life to supplying the diversionary arts that we use to hide from ourselves. He was a comedian who made people laugh. He was other things too: father, husband, friend of Slab’,a rock singer who enjoyed an aria: but mostly he was a comedian, and he made us laugh without the pain that comes from introspection.

One hopes he died fulfilled; for it is a truism that one can never know the fact of one’s own passage from this dimension. For us his performance would separate us for a time from our own anxieties and disillusionment
by revealing ourselves to us and permitting
us to laugh at our own vanity
and foolishness
and to escape ourselves for an instant
before returning to our own,
discordant universe.

Some years ago a more personal friend, than this distant image on a passing screen,
died in his sleep. When found by a cleaning lady the next day the television was on, the beer next to the bed was half drunk and the cork tipped cigarette he liked to smoke had burned down to the flesh. He was the headmaster of a local high school and his funeral was a moving affair.

I wrote this piece that follows now as a tribute to Derek Tarpey, in many ways the same kind of life fulfilling person as Bill. Today I re-publish it in tribute to the passage of a man who made us laugh.

For Derek then. For Bill Flynn now.
“Heaven’s mourning breaks” said the Preacherman
“We were touched:
Our lives, by his life,
Our lives by his death”

The preacher went on: “Live in the moment;
Do what must be done
Now,”
And he did that, this man who left so soon.

And then the Preacher spoke words
Of comfort for the living,
Who remain
Unaware of the truth;
Of the mystery within which we live,
Shaken now by this
Event: Are we
Supposed to think? Better sure
The polished gloss of words to stretch and gently massage
All our pain away.
He spoke of the Irish road;
Light words that skimmed across
The warm wet surface of
Our tears. And he continued,
His well rehearsed words of comfort
Tossing words upon further words
Which we all barely heard
So lost were we
In contemplation of the
Place where he was not.

The flag hung limp
Obscuring for me that
Professed man of god
Who spoke of journeys without end…
And so the tributes likewise
Who spoke of what he’d done. Short, sharp,
Pithy tight to bind the tears, which hung
In sorrow on each added word.

“What you saw
Was what you got”
And we all got an awful lot
For the changing of the world

Then, when the choir sang… “Tula
Mama….” Their intoned cadence
Reaching out:
Soothing us, while
The praise singer sang out
Evocations
Which thundered ‘round the crowded
Quad. Then,
The wind blew strong and the half-hung flags
Flew briskly in the late noon sun.

We felt our catharsis
Start then,
As the boys expressed their
Grief.
They sent away their leader
With a cry that shook
The leaf, still huddled deep inside
The barest winter trees…
Their war cry from the deepest past.

“A rum tum tum
A rum tum tum.”

Then, to rage at darest death and
Shake its claw away…
“A rum tum tum…
A rum tum tum…”

We shuddered, we who stayed behind.
Took heart again from
What he’d done, and we knew then
As the ancients did
The hollowness of death
That takes from us at random: reminding
Us of certainty and but for what
Go i.

Then, having heard from Whitman
We preferred to hear the boys, gathered
From a dozen
Distinct originations
Linked arms
Into a shield against the universe and
All
Its blasted tricks;

“A rum tum tum….
A rum tum tum…”

The birds upon the parapet
Launched themselves in fright.
The half-mast flag that had hung limp now
Stretched out for the light.

“A rum tum tum…
A rum tum tum…”

We stood awhile
`Till all the rest was silent.

.NiK(2002)

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