He was sitting on a doorstep in downtown Nashville on a grey Sunday afternoon. He was deep in conversation with a man smoking a cigarette sharing the step with him. The smell of alcohol billowed from his breath as he said hello when I bent down to reach his eye level. He reminded me of a Charles Dickens character as many of them ramble on and on about some type of tall tale. However, those ramblings came to an abrupt halt when I asked one simple question, “What brought you to Nashville, a woman?” I was halfway joking when I asked, but his response was quite sobering.
“She died of ALS at age 61 and she was the best thing that ever happened in my life,” talking about his wife who passed away several years ago. It was apparent to me that he has never recovered from that. Of course, how do you recover from the loss of someone who was the love of your life? Can you ever?
The non-violent civil rights leader known as Mahatma Ghandi once stated while in South Africa, “You don't know who is important to you until you actually lose them.” I think he was correct in that statement. I don't know how their love was before, but time away can actually drive a heart closer - even in death.
He said, “She died in my arms right down the street [pointing in the direction of South 8th Avenue].” I said, “On the street?” He said, “No, no, no… We had an apartment. We lived in a nicely furnished apartment.”
“Where do you live today,” I asked? He looked down and then shrugged his shoulders, “Under a bridge.”
His eyes started to water up… “Wanna see something,” he asked me as he removed his glasses with one hand and pulled out his wallet with the other. “I carry her license with me everywhere I go,” he pulled it out of his wallet and said that this was the only picture he had of her today. He then told me, “Her name was Rebecca Burcnette [Bur-chin-etty].” His friend who was still smoking a cigarette smiled and said, “She was Italian, those Italian girls are beautiful.”
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