“McCarty”

 

The soldier screams

while Idu broods and

the books gather dust.

Memories of Kevin

pulse in the dark,

his signature glowing

in the light of Grandma’s

lamp that grounds me 

in a spiritual metaphor.

***

In thinking of Kevin, life invariably becomes a canvas and beauty reveals itself.

My friendship with him had a very brief flowering before I left for the Army at the start of my senior year at Indiana Wesleyan.  I had loaned him a book for a Dr. Martin class which may or may not have been “Western Intellectual and Social History” which we fondly referred to as WISH.

He was living in the studio apartment below me and Jacob Isang.  Jacob was a dashing and popular soccer player from Nigeria and friends with Idu Ikadabu who was a fellow soccer player also from Nigeria.  Idu later sat for a portrait with Kevin while I was gone which now hangs in my office.

Kevin was quick to make our acquaintance as new neighbors though I’m not sure Jacob knew what to make of this half-blind artist dude.  My memory is sketchy but I seem to remember my last glimpse of Kevin was from the back elevated porch of my apartment as he disappeared around the side of the house holding the red book.

I spent the next two years in Korea as an infantryman before returning to Marion, Indiana and reconnecting with Kevin which blossomed into a bona fide friendship.  We bonded over books, music, and intellectual pursuits spending untold hours talking about art, political ideologies, philosophical systems, and metaphysical conundrums as well as some downright silly stuff which may or may not have included all of the above.

After graduation I had to make special trips up to Marion to hang out with him or take him on some adventure as he could not drive due to his poor eye sight.  I found my way into the Orthodox Church through that time period and that increasingly became a topic of conversation between us which lead to him becoming an OC fellow traveller.  

And eventually he fully lost what little sight he had due to a reoccurrence of the cancer that he had been born with.  This drug out over an extended period of chemotherapy and surgeries but his embracing of a Faith grounded in being and experience (as opposed to ideas and intellectualism) deepened him in ways I could have never imagined possible in the years we had spent together thinking lofty thoughts and talking deep into the night but mostly just running in circles.  

The books had gathered dust but his soul was gathering light and life in his latter years.