All We Love We Leave Behind

I recently attended a memorial service. Several weeks ago, I learned about the passing of Jim Gustafson, a poet who had been living in Fort Myers doing three things according to his profile I found on Alliance for the Arts: “he reads, writes, and pulls weeds.” Reading and writing go hand in hand as we all know, but pulls weeds? I thought about it for a bit, twirling thoughts and ideas through my fingers before they would weigh enough on any one of my indexes or thumbs for an idea to formulate through the pressing of keys. Why include such strange whereabouts, especially without clarification? No context? Who even was this man whose memorial service I attended? While trying to explain the quote, one of the thoughts I had was, “I myself find yard work therapeutic.” When I was young, 11, my family left Georgia for good, leaving its hills and the Blue Ridge Mountains, which would soon tower just as high above the plains of my past as it looked in the rearview mirror of our car as we drove further south. We were going to Florida.

It started with Ponte Vedra, then Boca, Delray, and finally, we ended up in Sarasota, where my parents and grandmother live now. We would move somewhere new within the state bounds whenever it clicked that we had once again chosen to live in a place above our means. However, one thing remained consistent through all of this change: the fact that we barely had a yard. Sometimes we had absolutely none, but sometimes, sometimes we would have a couple square feet of shitty Florida grass with blades that were thick and flat. I’ve since learned that this grass is called St. Augustine Grass, which is grown widely throughout Florida because of its resilience. It establishes itself quickly after being planted, partially because of its above-ground runners, which help it spread its plague across the entirety of a yard. Runners are these long, green, snaking cylinders that remind me of the worms you see on sidewalks, empty and unbothered after being dried into an afterlife that must be a vast, barren desert. It must be when that’s the way you go out. When I see the worms lying there, with no expression, no identity, they make me feel incredibly sad, to a varying degree that depends on the day. But not when I see these damn grass runners. I want them all dead. They make me have dreams at night where I am Arnold Schwarzenegger with a lawn mower and clippers, both held high above my head (yes, I am that strong, I’m ARNOLD FRICKIN SCHWARZENEGGER) while screaming — my single goal: the total extermination of their filthy presence from my state.

In real life, it’s not as entertaining or fantastical. I take off my shirt, put on sunglasses, and maybe a bit of sunscreen to keep from crisping as I prepare for yard work. I’m always listening to music while I’m mowing and edging. Sometimes it’s a new album or maybe something I’m familiar with, so I can enjoy jamming out while I possibly reminisce at the same time. I enjoy that. That time to myself, time to feel like I’m doing something productive, helping my family out, getting exercise. Maybe that’s why Jim also liked it. Perhaps it was as simple as it gave him something to do. Who knows? I didn’t know him. But many people did. And as I climbed up the stairs of the Cohen building and then walked toward room 214, where the memorial was, I was somewhat nervous. I had been invited, well, the whole creative writing class had been invited by my professor Tom to attend this. He said Jim was important to him, along with so many other English employees here at FGCU. He said he was incredibly kind and would fill in as a temporary teacher for many professors. Tom said, “After I got back, the kids would whine, ‘Where’s Jim?!’” He was that good.

So I went. As I walked in through the doors the Wednesday evening of the event, my nervousness was still there besides the fact it was a smaller group of people than I anticipated, dispersed here and there in even smaller groups of maybe three or four. I felt at odds and out of place, but luckily Tom was right at the entrance, so I popped into his conversation for a split second to say hi and ease the tension that no one felt except for myself. My second step to try not to appear as a lonely floating soul, which at that moment in time I entirely was, mind you, was to get some fruit and water from the snack table. I wasted some time away just eating and processing everything happening. Some minutes later, hopefully, with no grape skins stuck between my teeth, I went over to these small round high tables, which had a copy of the Mangrove Review upon each of them. I began flipping through, and two women approached me. We struck up a good conversation, and Tom eventually joined us. We talked about Jim, but mostly writing and music, as those are the two most important things to me and, I assume, many of the people within the confines of that room. Soon things were getting quiet, and the four of us dispersed, taking our seats or going to the bathroom, doing whatever we needed since the service was about to begin.

Now I’m not an exceptionally outwardly emotional person. For the most part, I try to contain it all within myself, the voices and highway blues echoing in and out of my mind. But that night was what it’s like to be completely open about each and every fleeting thought and feeling. So many powerful moments back to back to back; it’s as if you took the climatic burst of the final minutes of a sunset, stretched it out over several hours, and then made it a hell of a lot more personal. Five or so people went to the front and shared their personal history with Jim. Some recurring themes were how he was incredibly kind, talented, funny, and just a down-to-earth human being. They talked about his unreleased issues of The Idiot and one of his assignments from a class he took as an adult. He always was a student, they said, all the way till the end. It was a night about what Jim meant while he was here and what Jim meant now that he was gone. I came so close to letting more than just a single tear out at one point when a recording was played by someone who couldn’t be there that night. The man who was narrating was Stephen Cavitt. And my god, that 3 minutes and 52 seconds was one of the most captivating moments I’ve experienced in a long time. As he talked about crows migrating through the piedmont, explaining how they had never seen them do this in his 45 years, we all knew what was truly migrating through everyone’s lives at that moment. Death. (Here is a link to his wonderful narration https://youtu.be/HnPQqO3o1T0)

And that is why I attended that memorial. Sure, it was an event that related to my field, and there might have been something for me to gain by going. But I went because Death is immense. Death is the knock that can never cease being heard. Death is the formidable thought that makes you think of everything you can lose in this world. Even the most brilliant, beautiful blue eyes, with their fire that ignited your soul, will go up in their last little stream of smoke at some point. You better have hoped you inhaled enough of their vapor whenever they blew your way so maybe you’ll be able to conjure visions of them again in your mind. Because Death’s a tyrant, a tyrant I haven’t had much exposure to in my life. It was time to face it head-on. But it was more than that. It was to see a family and his friends’ reaction in the face of it. Tom spoke so highly of Jim that he unquestionably had made a vast difference in at least one person’s life. What makes someone care so much? What are the building blocks of one’s legacy? I learned as I experienced the fruits of one’s labor firsthand. It made me realize I want to live a life as impactful as Jim’s. And it made me think about how I could achieve such a goal. What would it be like when I was dead and gone? What did I want it to be like? Here are some ideas:

I want everyone to know I had the most wonderful family. How my mother’s heart existed so contagious, it made a set in stone to be a stoic man like myself able to resist. She taught me how to relate to these other wonderful people on this earth, care for them and live my life kindly. Eat, drink, walk, talk; no words need to be said; she’s why I was ever standing. And even when she herself wasn’t, dead and deep in the ground, no one could have replaced my mom. My father was the teacher. People better know this; he taught me well. My brother, the best friend I could’ve asked for. I want him to know that when my notebook was closed, and I didn’t feel like writing anymore, he made it swing open because I could believe in the world again and all the things I hopefully wrote about. How he made me realize there was always a little more left in me, so I’d think, “Maybe there is a little something, and I can lose a little more.” Even if it was losing, at least it was something. And my grandmother, she better have gotten to heaven. She fucking deserves it. Even if I didn’t quite make it, I’d want it to be there just for her.

I want them to tell me I impacted them for the better. I want them to have said the things I do and say nudged them off their trajectories in fun little familial ways. “Yep, that’s Aiden.” I hope they told me they were headed for better places than before.

I want every single person I came in contact with to have seen and received my kindness. Being here at college has made me realize just how cruel this all is. I hope I could have loosened life’s grip. Even if just by a bit.

My friends, in particular, I hope I made them feel my love. I want them to have listened to my musings and felt like I was always there to listen to theirs. I want my creative nature to have helped them see the world differently. I want them to have found new music they would never have without me.

I hope people see my creativity in my work. I don’t want to sell out and get some career that makes me sacrifice who I am. The job bends to me, not me to it. I want to have colleagues like Jim who hold a memorial to read my poetry or non-fiction, or whatever it is, not because it strokes my ego, but because I would then know I did my job.

I want people to have seen I was a man of principles. I barely ever lied, never stole, nor cheated anything. My word would have been sacred. Trust is and would have been so important to me.

If I chose to raise a family, I want to be remembered as a loving father, even beyond their younger years. I want to have done things with my children and made an impact so immense they see so many similarities between us. I want them never to have wished for any other father. I hope I hugged them more than I ever really had to. Group hugs with my loving life as well.

I hope she and I were equals in every respect. I hope she viewed me as a strong man, not because of stature, muscle, or a stern brow but because of the much more important things. And selfishly, maybe I hope I die before her because I would have loved her so much the pain would’ve been something that would crush me insufferably.

This could be my legacy.

A simple way to put it is I love bike rides. If you’ve somehow managed to read any of my writing, you know this fact. I’d like to think that maybe my middle-aged son or daughter could be going for a bike ride and stop at a place I showed them when they were kids. And I’d come across their mind for a nice little moment. Maybe they’ll shed a tear so heavy with all of the fond memories it would form and then be gone in an instant. And so they would then continue riding on. Dead men don’t need to linger to have been important.


“Your roar of love
Slayed my despair
It ripped me from my path
That led me to nowhere
You shook me from my sleep
That willed me to die
A final goodbye
All we love we leave behind”

All We Love We Leave Behind — Converge