The cortege coiled past the bar where he would stop for one beer or maybe two at the most with friends he had known all his life except those first short years in an England that no longer exists and that he could no longer remember.  He could read but could only write his name if he had to and for the rest he would fake bad eye-sight.  For his life it wasn't needed, the skills he needed and had were knowing at what point the waving, almost endless out there, wheatfields should be brought down and he knew when to stop and move with his wife to the city.

 

The guy at the garage on the corner asked if we had come for the funeral and when we said yes the stories came almost tumbling out, "knew him and Lena when they were courting."  The word indicating an elegance that no longer exists and their marriage lasted more than fifty years while most people these days can barely get through a weekend together.  The pump had clicked off but we stood there talking in that early winter blue light they get out there and when I finally paid and left I gave him some extra for a drink but it embarassed us both because it wasn't exactly the right gesture but none are and it was close enough just like kissing Lena and Rose's hands back at the hall was a little strange but close enough.

 

In the bar I tossed down two quick scotches, more inappropriate gestures but I couldn't leave it just yet and it's not as if his biography will come out next year although we must not forget that nearly the whole town turned out and the line of cars with their headlights on stretched from town all the way out to the grave yard, almost two miles and, more importantly, people like him never go looking for it and would have been humbled at the thought of a whole procession in their name, they get everything they need in the faces of family and old friends that are around them. People like him and most people, at their best, are like him, never seek the power and glory offered to some in this life and if lives were measured in column inches in newspapers then this guy named Bert scarcely existed and this other guy, the one who died the next day but a year younger had the whole world on the edge of its seat and everyone, east and west, started jockeying for power and glory just like he had all his life.

 

Not Bert though, I phoned him one Christmas a few years back and said Merry Christmas sir and he said don't sir me and it became a private joke between us and I don't really like calling anyone sir anyway but if we were to meet this other guy in the Kremlin or any of these other glory hounds east and west sir would hardly be enough, the protocol of power is so fragile that the average person has to take lessons just to learn  how to say hello but it's not like that with Bert or any of the people out there so long as you have a good grip and look them in the eye you'll be all right.

 

You can't measure a life by words in a newspaper because if you make enough of a splash and let's face it, to make it into a newspaper you've got to have a mean and crooked streak a yard wide and Bert just wasn't like that and he leaves behind a family who loves him and a small town that cares and it is more than enough.  This other guy leaves a whole world trembling and fearing for their lives and some call that power and glory and that fake cowboy in the White House is just as bad but when a guy like Bert passes and it happens every day with only a few hundred  who even notice but when you think of the collective weight of all the people like him who live a good solid life and die straight on with their family around them it is the real power and the real glory and you don't have to study just to know how to meet them, you simply look them straight in the eye and shake their hand.

 

                                       November, 1982