Remembering Charlie

For the past several years, my husband and I have been a part of a Sunday Brunch group. This group, typically around twelve of us, meet every week at a restaurant and not only enjoy a great meal but also discuss the events of the week. In a political city like Little Rock, there are always many interesting comments not only about upcoming elections but also about literature, science, religion, and other subjects. One of our group, Charlie, was outspoken on many of these issues. He often spoke very loudly because as an octogenarian he had lost a lot of his hearing and wore a hearing aid. We could often hear him before saw him. He typically was late for our gatherings. He and his friend Nonnie, or Naomi as we call her, would arrive either separately or together. Likely because of their respective canes or walkers, they took a while to sit down at the table.

I quickly observed that Charlie seemed to be mad at the world. He often griped about the poor service at the restaurant whenever a server failed to bring him immediately a small request such as a knife to cut his sandwich. I often wondered if this impatience was a result of simply aging accompanied by the frustration of increasing physical limitations. I later discovered that Charlie had had a hard life.

It seems that his first wife, suffering from a mental problem, picked up their twelve-year-old son from church one day, took him out to a road by the river, and killed him and then herself. Some twenty years later he lost all his investments in the savings and loan debacle. How does one recover from such a tragedy? Is it even possible?

One of the positive aspects of Charlie's personality was his passion for baking bread, and supposedly he perfected a perfect French baguette. He loved to canoe on the Buffalo River here in Arkansas and was known for a famous bumper sticker he had on his car, saying in Latin "not random." He worked diligently to preserve the Buffalo as a natural habitat for generations to come.

Charlie died suddenly last week doing what he loved best--eating and discussing his favorite topics with his friend Bill. Today we can only hope that he has joined a new brunch group and can bring his uniqueness to a different group--wherever he is.