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Goodbye, Joe - Melinda Marble
In his last year, many of Joe’s e-mail messages had the subject line: not dead yet. And for me, Joe is not dead. Yet... the absence I feel today is as immense as his presence.
I first experienced that presence in the late 70s, when my new friend Henry told me that his friend Joe was the smartest man he’d ever met. I thought well what am I, chopped liver? So I was prepared to be skeptical when he introduced us at a Council on Foundations conference in Seattle. A little while later, this lanky, suit-and-bow-tie-wearing, self described “Aryan-looking guy” and I jumped on a ferry and into an elaborate charade to attract the attention of a foundation person who we hoped would notice, and then give a job to, Henry. Strangely this piece of hastily improvised street theater worked. Henry got the job and, struggling to keep my balance while fast talking in those choppy Puget Sound waters that night, I found a fast friend.
That was Joe at work. He traveled fast and conversed slowly. Many of my meetings with him took place on foot in downtown Boston, me running to keep up with that long stride. I sometimes wondered if Joe liked to keep me slightly out of breath to give himself the conversational advantage. Each walk/run was a tutorial on Boston. Every block his face would light with enthusiasm as he pointed out the steaming tea kettle, Broad Street, how the afternoon light illuminated an iron staircase spiraling up the side of a building. This beatific expression rapidly shifted to doleful disappointment at any affront to his aesthetic – the way those I.M. PEI buildings at Rowes Wharf cut off the view of the harbor for example.
Part of the pleasure of knowing Joe was having common enemies. We always had a brief enemies list, reserved for particularly mean spirited and selfish people. I always enjoyed seeing the blank blue stare he’d assume in the presence of one of the bad guys. It reminded me of the actor John Barrymore in 20th Century, grandly saying: “I close the iron door on you.”
The rest of us got the smiles, the luminous blessings, the boundless generosity of Joe, who relentlessly connected us all together and promoted our causes. I experienced this generosity in many forms, but most importantly, Joe gave me Boston, encouraged me to come here for a year that turned into 20. Without that, I wouldn’t have met my husband Jay, had my daughter Grace, my life here.
Joe and Marsha made me feel at home in Boston. They showed me that domestic life could be something like a 30s screwball comedy: smart, funny and affectionate – glorious. Here’s something I wrote after a night at their Duxbury house around 1985:
I arrive and Max and Alex hurtle and trip out of the house, their blond heads leaving little trails of light like fireflies. They hang upside down from swings, identify plants and secret forts (don’t tell our parents about this, Max whispers), and recount the day’s small tragedies: spilled m&ms and skinned knees. “I found you a lucky rock. All white rocks are lucky,” Alex says, very sure) And she presses it into my hand, generous, like her parents. Then they lead me inside. Marsha is slicing homemade bread. She sits me down, hands me a warm slice and Joe makes one of his pronouncements: “homemade bread is one of the great, good things.” I feel something on my foot, look down and see that EB White, the resident rabbit is nibbling on my shoelaces. Joe paces the kitchen, stirring something, while he and Marsha talk. It’s lovely to sit still, to let their conversation wash over me, to feel the cool white rock and the warm bread in my hands.
Joe walked fast, but he slowed down time when it came to listening. A conversation with him was a leisurely affair, with lots of pauses and cul de sacs. In countless long talks in his office, his pacing made a circle, created a wonderful safe space in which I could wander, encounter my own ideas, good and bad, and see the way forward. Joe was a compass. He never told you, but he pointed the way. In his silences I often found my true direction.
At the end of every talk, he would give me an assignment. It could be a book I should read (and he bought and gave away countless copies of Jay’s books to other friends), a friend I should help, a cause that should be advanced. He’d lay it out offhandedly and then say in earnest: “Would you? When you have time?”
And that continued after the terrible afternoon when I got a phone call from Henry, telling me about Joe’s cancer. I called Joe right away. He was calm and measured and funny, and he had assignments for me.
What struck me in the past year was Joe’s civility in the face of death. Always a gentle guy, his gentleness, his gentility became immense, like a sky he pulled around him, shaping a space, a canopy we could shelter under with him. What was also striking was his joy. Joe’s family and friends responded to his illness heroically, pouring out all their love and feeling for him, trying to give back in some small measure – a playlist, a smoothie, an errand – all that he had done for them. And I felt, seeing Joe in his last year, that this outpouring of affection and appreciation, satisfied some deep need in him, that he felt it was ample, enough, and was satisfied.
Joe wanted to live so much, he worked so hard at it and he found so much joy in the magnificent care of his friends and family. And when there was no more time, he said goodbye. To me, via e-mail, with his last assignment, typically both global and terribly specific: “Please keep everything good alive. And worry about TPI.” Reading it on a very dark night in Paris, I could feel his presence, leaning forward, nodding, saying “would you?”
And maybe that is why I found myself in the past week doing everything else but write these remarks, until yesterday, when I realized I was afraid to put them on paper. I was afraid that speaking them would make me admit the truth, make real the fact that Joe is gone, that we’ve had our last conversation. In my life, Joe was, like warm bread, a great good thing. Imagine life without bread - or Joe.
Joe, if I could keep everything good alive, you would surely be walking rapidly through the streets of Boston this afternoon, or sitting in perfect stillness in your office, or best yet, dancing around your kitchen cooking dinner. We’d be planning Henry’s next job. There would be thousands of “would yous?” ahead.
Yet…Joe, you are not dead. You are alive in this room with the friends and family you love so much, with the “would yous?” you left us to carry out. I know you share our pride in the way Marsha, Max and Alexis, Cabell, Amy, Denise, Steve and Sophia cared for you, saw you through, returned the many gifts you gave them. Your absence links us to each other in new and stronger ways, carves out a space in which we can remember you, celebrate you, and, as you would want, maybe become our best, most generous selves.
Thank you for your impossible assignments. Thank you for this last most generous gift, the chance to say goodbye.
Melinda Marble serves as Executive Director of The Paul and Phyllis Fireman Foundation in Boston.
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