Time plays out differently this week. Silence fills the air at points when an apparatus should ring. The favored chairs now empty in the familiar house listen to the answering machine with his voice asking to leave a message he will never receive. Endless syncopation with no riff. It could be Coltrane.
My father left this space and time on a quiet Friday morning this July. What is left of what was is a distant memory now. Ken Thrasher, the complex and complicated individual fell and just faded away after eighty-four years on the planet. At one point he stood six feet and three inches tall with 180 pounds on his angular frame. The last month of his life the doctor measured him at just under six feet while weighing around130 pounds. Time exacts a toll on every person. The beat with no meat who could disappear within a tear. It could be Monk.
All the gifts of youth in the hands and eyes wore away over the years. The last decade found the comfort of the piano, or the pad and pencil lost to unsteady hands. The hands became constant reminders of fleeting youth and how quickly it disappeared into the shakiness of a dissonant pattern called old age. The platter of patter. It could be the Duke.
Sad sentiments have no place now. Spirit shines brightly and echoes reverberate with piano and laughter. Voices chime in on familiar choruses as the keys pound the flights of mental improvisations the player pulls from the air. It could be Bud Powell.
Reunions await in the land of dreams beyond the banal of earth. Youth and wisdom wander in the ether of another dimension. Free from cares and a life of recycling into the endless today of constant now. I remember you. I whistle your tunes and admire your art and the faithful ledgers you crafted. It was a nice visit. I still have Fats and Brubeck on the hi-fi to keep us company after our last conversation.
Goodbye, Dad. Find out what your wife was up to all these years in the cosmos. We'll stay tuned.
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