Requiem

My friend Duane died on Sunday. It was just a couple of hours before we would have sung a concert together with Mendelssohn Club Chorus. The music was beautiful. First a commissioned piece drawn from Tibetan folk music, written by Andrea Clearfield, and then, after intermission, the transcendent Faure Requiem. A lot of people said that we didn't know it, but we were singing Duane's requiem. I'm grateful that we didn't know that. I don't think we could have gotten through the performance.

It's been a hard week. I am sad without knowing how to be. Duane wasn't someone I knew well, but now that he's gone, I realize that he was someone I loved. He was sweet, gentle, friendly, funny. I felt as if he always made a point of saying something nice or funny to me at every rehearsal. I loved that we had this special little friendship.

And we did. We talked about my silly hair, we talked about his teaching schedule (he was a French professor at Haverford), we talked about Blair and her thesis -- as a medieval scholar himself, he knew all about the works Blair was studying. We talked about nothing in particular.

He was a tenor. He sang with Mendelssohn Club for over thirty years. He had two cats. He lived in South Philadelphia. I think he lived alone (other than the cats.)

He was so kind. I wanted him to meet Blair so they could talk about French and the medieval stuff, and he waited around after the MC holiday concert so they could chat. I don't think it was a long conversation, but it meant a lot to me that he would take the time just to be all French-medieval with my French-medieval-obsessed kid.

So during this week of being sad and not knowing how to be, I've been working on making a book of remembrances about Duane, on behalf of Mendelssohn Club. It's going to be something we give to his brother, Brian, who lives in Texas. The work has been cathartic, giving me a reason to think about Duane and a way to grieve. And what I've found out -- in collecting, copying and pasting into my layout all the comments from the Mendelssohn Club folks -- is that everybody who knew him thought that they had this special little friendship with him.

Everybody thought that he was sweet, gentle, friendly and funny. And everybody is very very sad.

What we all know is that we were lucky to know this kind and decent man. And we will all miss him dearly.

There's a memorial Meeting for Worship for him at Haverford College on Saturday. And we will sing the Requiem again, this time truly for our Duane.