a friend since childhood, mine not his

This week it was Rep. I was stunned. He's old enough to die. We all knew it was coming, but he wasn't the dying type, ever. In his seventies still, he had cleared trails for Mohonk Mountain House, liked working by himself but if you caught him sometime, like a wood spirit accidentally caught in a hunter's trap, he could charm with his West Virginia accent just slight enough for you to understand all the words. Like Stein in Lord Jim, he was ready to leave this all, ready for some time, I'm told. Was he, too, disllusioned by what he had seen, or was it some interior deconstruction of mind and will like so many others of Conrad's protagonists. And do I keep going back to modern literature for examples because that's all I read all those years, or because that's all those writers wrote about, how we live toward dying. That's where the story ends, with Stein among his butterflies. So what happens to Patsy? From the time I was so short that my neck hurt trying to look at all the grownups at the party (I think it was a small wedding reception for the two of them), they were Patsy and Rep. That's who I visited on my way to the Hudson River where my father finally built his last house. The stop at Shale Hill Farm was a relief after the effort of looking at disappointment in his eyes. Whatever disappointment was in Rep's eyes was part of the mystery that made him fascinating, and anyhow it wasn't about me, and Patsy was far too busy cooking at the counters she specially installed for the tall woman she was. Cooking, canning, drying herbs, later her garlic recipes, she took care of Rep and whoever walked in their door. She was down home, her accent was Virginian and also soft, and there were books everywhere. They strayed out of piles in the livingroom and down from shelves so high that there was actually a ladder although you would never have thought to call the room a library. It was a room for lounging comfortably and having stiff drinks. If you wandered out into the barn, Rep always gave the same tour and told you the names of all the animals, mostly chickens but a few riding horses. He was as proud of that barn as Patsy was of her evergrowing garden. And now she has to leave that all, not in the Conradian sense but very simply, sadly, sell her home and find somewhere to go. It is the new story that we shall hear over and over now. The house is too much for her to manage and besides she should be somewhere where strangers can help her with the things that she will need help with. Goodbye Shale Hill Farm, goodbye Patsy, goodbye Dr. Reppert. I will visit all of you again and again for as long as my memory holds. That's a promise.