ELEGY FOR A HIGHLAND MAN

photo credit: http://healingwoman.blogspot.com

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Douglas C. Taylor 1/16/1919-6/18/1999
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Each year on June 18th, I have set aside a day to do Everything Douglas. I listen to Douglas music (no pop, rap, rock,blues, jazz, or Stravinsky) and play the cd of The Magic Flute which I received as a gift for a donation to WCPE after he died. The Magic Flute was his favorite opera and a highlight for him was when he was cast as a monk in Appalachian State's production. He made a good monk with his beard, basso profundo, and beanpole height. He was amused when at a restaurant someone came up to him asking for a blessing rather than an autograph. My remembrance reading for this day includes parts of a mystery such as something by P.D. James or Tony Hillerman and Psalm 100. I go to a cafeteria. Eureka had a buffet but not a cafeteria so Greek food was the alternate choice. My much loved theory was that Scotland was settled by Greeks rather than Romans. Douglas taught Humanities and was partial to the Greeks. I guess Romans didn't have as good a salad. He was a train lover and said the best part about living in Durham was that one could go anywhere from there. He hated cities. The closest he came to liking a city was Halifax, Nova Scotia. I think that was probably because of his chance encounter with a Greenpeace vessel and the subsequent conversation with a doctor on board. When they became overly animated, I told him that Douglas couldn't be spared as he needed to drive me home to Carolina. It was a close call and a few years later, Douglas was on a freighter going to New Zealand, taking a route very like that of the Rainbow Warrior. As to my attire for this day, I make sure when going out the door that I have my peace earrings and I think about Normandy. How could someone so sensitive and shy and bookish have managed all the horror? He had frequent nightmares about a particular German soldier. I imagine it was his first "kill." He would sob, "He was only a boy!" On the night Desert Storm was announced, we were at choir practice, a small choir at the Presbyterian church in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, as lovely and peaceful a place as one could imagine. I got up and left. I couldn't sing. But I wasn't the first one. Douglas was first. At the end of my remembering day, I try very quietly, Abide with Me, which Douglas sang for his father's funeral, a man who had been "saved" at the Boston boatyards, fresh from Scotland at the age of eighteen, by a Salvation Army quintet and later went to the Philippines to lead the singing at a YMCA. As far as I know, he did not play an instrument and discouraged Douglas from continuing his clarinet after graduating from New Rochelle High School. He didn't play for four decades until I found this out and suggested he return to the stage with the Watauga County Community Band. A lot of no's followed but I could see it was what he really wanted to do so off we went for clarinet buying. When he and my mother and I moved to Durham, he played in three bands and kept three t-shirts for the summer day when there was a gathering of bands. Personally, I thought he should wear his Scottish Country Dance tee. I was overruled. I think now of the evenings at the cabin when the fireflies came up at nine o'clock and the stars shone brighter than anywhere. I pretend he is dong an Amtrak loop or a Friendship Sloop adventure. I expect a postcard to come soon and I say goodbye all over again.

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.....may the years of your life bring joy enough to assuage the sorrow...