St. Kevin Was Here

st. kevin was here
Originally uploaded by sesame ellis

Thinking about Kevin this morning hurts. A few weeks ago I found his name in my cell phone and tried to call the number wondering if someone might pick up, if I’d hear his voice one more time on the message, or a disinterested recording telling me the number was no longer in service. It was the last one, but I couldn’t bring myself to erase his name and number.

What set off thoughts of Kevin today was seeing a picture on flickr.com from one of my contacts that had been to Glendalough, Ireland a year or two ago and taken pictures of the lake and St. Kevin’s tower. That picture was buried deep in her photo stream, but someone had found it today and commented on it bringing it back to the surface. The title of the photo is “st. kevin was here” and shows her daughter playing on the shores of the lake.

Visiting Kevin was one of those rare treats in life. A time when you know you are about to embark on a journey of unfettered verbosity which can take you to the most far flung places. In those early years much of it was hot air full of strawmen we could easily set up and knock down, but the important thing was that two people were together, communing, and getting goofy if things got too earnest or we got too full of ourselves.

I still feel terrible when I remember the time I lost my cool with him and really cut him down. It was 1994 and we made a road trip to Cincinnati to stay with some artist friends of his on Mt. Adams for the weekend. Prior to leaving Cincinnati we took in a movie. I can’t remember the movie we agreed to see together, but when we got to the theater he discovered that Jodie Foster’s “Nell” was playing and he decided to do his own thing and see it.

Driving back to Marion after the movie Kevin was feeling particularly garrulous and went on at length about the movie, philosophizing and intellectualizing it to the Nth degree with no signs of letting up for the duration of the 4 hour trip. I finally became completely exasperated and asked him, “Kevin, has anyone ever told you you talk too much?” An awkward silence followed that lasted several minutes before he asked me with an irritated edge to his voice, “Has anyone ever told you that?” I so regretted letting that slip out and we spent the remainder of that trip in an agitated quietude.

But that was one of those things about hanging out with Kevin. He could be so exasperating at times. Over the years that I knew him (especially the early years, before the first signs of cancer and before he came into the Orthodox Faith) there were more than a few people rebuffed by his words and behaviors, but the pros far outweighed the cons for me in nurturing our friendship. If one could just bear up a bit under his eccentricities and lack of social graces there was a huge pay off in getting close to him. The transformation that he underwent in his later years with the progression of cancer and spiritual deepening was truly remarkable. Where before there was arrogance and frequent irritation in intellectual wranglings it was more and more replaced by humility, patience, and love. I wish I could hear his voice again.