Sydney Lea: Final Visit

He kept awkwardly laying a hand across his forehead, trying to cover his eyes. He’d done that a lot by then. Ever the iron-butt Yankee, he meant to hide his tears, though I’d seen them often enough. He didn’t know that, but we’d been friends for years, and you notice things. 

He mumbled, “All them stories…” His voice trailed off, but after a few moments, he rasped: “Half the time they was about our boys, like that June I told you about when the trout bit like mad dogs, or the fall when we seen the bull moose straddle-legged a cow.”

Once more he fell quiet, maybe for two minutes. Then he went on. “I never spoke of Birdie’s part, but you know, it ain’t like them boys come out of some other woman. Don’t matter. I barely to mention her name, just always said ‘the wife.’” 

Her name was Bridget, but people called her Birdie. She didn’t like the nickname, but Bridget never stuck.I often wondered why she hung back so, and not only when it came to her name.

The summer before, Wayne and Eddie, their middle-aged twins, were driving her down to Georgia for a week by the sea, which she’d never seen. He’d stay.  He’d be fine all by himself, he claimed. But he hadn’t meant forever. A drunk driver killed Birdie and both sons on a Baltimore bridge. 

“Wasn’t many really knew…Bridget,” he said. “She never got out too much.  Craved the house. The house and them sons.”

I didn’t know this was the final visit we’d have. You forget what’s precious till it’s gone. As the old tune has it, you don’t miss your water… so on. His was not the first death of a dear one for me. I have no counsel beyond pay attention, which I pledged to do on the day he passed. I still mourn him, but I shortly went right on as usual, never imagining another catastrophe.

They say he died “peacefully, in his sleep.” I’ll buy the sleep part. The poor man was not much past seventy. He’s well spared, I suppose, and yet how can I or anyone just forge ahead, forgetting how easily people can slip away? He did that too. 

Essay copyright 2026 Sydney Lea

Sydney Lea (born 1942) is an American poet, novelist and essayist. He was the founding editor of the New England Review and was the Poet Laureate of Vermont from 2011 to 2015. In 2021, he received Vermont’s highest artistic distinction, The Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts.