'Much to Enjoy and Admire'

I think we both sensed it might be our final conversation. We talked about the Cleveland we knew as kids – the main library downtown on Superior Avenue, Kay’s Books over on Prospect, a bar called Hernando’s Highway on Chester by the Greyhound station, Grabowski’s Music Studio where Ken started playing clarinet at age seven. And our Uncle Harry who, back in the Sixties, had wired his pickup truck for sound and from blocks away we heard blasting polka music. And our cousin Lenny who had an electric guitar, though the only tune he knew how to play was the Twilight Zone theme. In retrospect, I see that what these random things had in common was some degree of amusement. No resentments or regrets. We weren’t recalling the miseries, painful and trifling. This wasn’t a conscious strategy. We shared the memories that bubbled to the surface. Sitting beside his bed in hospice, something moved me to bring up Montaigne, author of essays that are of central importance to me. Ken had never read the…