I Will Miss Him

Today has been difficult I've lost a man that was very important to me, his name was Willis.  He was the most gentle person I had ever known.  I loved him.

He was never political, yet his friends moved in the world of politics.  Willis was ...a man who crossed time.  He was a pianist.  The great musicians of the past lived again in his fingers when he stroked a piano's keyboard.  I always marveled he read sixteenths and quarter notes, waves of tremolo, profundo, sustinado on a page like we read the letters of the alphabet in a book. 

Beneath the music lived a man of many talents, he loved cooking for his friends and family.  Not simple things on his menu, it had to be difficult.  I remember when he did a rather large pig on an oil drum that was cut to resemble a smoker.  The ropes binding the feet couldn't stand up to the heat and when the snapped towards the cook he said, "My God it looks like a burned dog!!!"

We ate potato and macaroni salad and drank many glasses of wine.  Then there was the time when we had a fund raiser for the Alexandria Recital Series there were tables set out by the pool for forty.  There was a sunken patio and lined by six foot plants of Cannabis.

Behind each person lies someone that is not what the surface portrays.  He was a lovely man and I am so happy he was a part of my life.