Chuck on the Topic of the Pain I
Caused Him by Leaving Him so I Could
Go “Live” in Edinburgh with my Wife
“ ’Twould have been much neater if you could have conveniently died.”
~ Charles Randall Stanfield in a letter to Phillip Whidden mailed March 13,
1986 and received March 18
We’re even, I’m afraid, Chuck. That’s because
I now know you died first. And then a year
And six months later, by life’s painful laws,
Your letter surfaced from my files. It’s queer
How things are ordered. You were younger by
Five years and so I should have been the one
To make the final parting. From the sky,
Though, God expunged you with His lightning gun,
For God, it seems, looms more capricious than
The other factors in our friendship. He
Decided that the only Christian man
I’d ever loved should die by his decree.
The final manly irony is that
I wanted no reunion. You’d grown fat.