Yesterday Was Hard

Yesterday, I learned of the death of a friend from Covid-19, followed by the death of John Prine. 

Jerry Reveron was hired to be the food service director of our school after we made a multi-million dollar investment into a new, state-of-the-art dining facility.  He was a lauded chef and created a food culture in a boarding school - which if you went to boarding school back when I did would have been considered an impossibility. He lived excellence. There's no other way to describe him. He could apparently be a hard man to work for, if you weren't also committed to excellence.

One of the best nights of the year was when we would be invited to dine with the trustees.  Jerry would put on a feast that still gets my mouth watering thinking about.  He interacted with students and teachers and guests.  He talked food with anyone.  He taught cooking classes for faculty and students alike.  I never knew him as being anything by delightful.

I never obviously knew John Prine.  I think people have a John Prine moment, if they're lucky. Aside from Angel from Montgomery, his songs aren't the type to climb Billboard charts.  Prine comes from a recommendation from a friend.  I can't recall if it was my friend Karen or my sister who first gave me a tape with Prine's songs on it.

His voice was wry and warm, funny and sad.  As I said to a friend on Facebook, John Prine was a good musician, a great storyteller and a transcendent humanist. His obvious joy and humor especially in the face of life's absurdities made him a touchstone for people who heard his music. As I said to my sister, John Prine was the guy you hoped would sit next to you at the bar.  He'd be funny, he'd be kind, he'd listen, he'd spin a yarn. 

The outpouring of grief for Prine was real.  He was, for me, a guy I knew for a while a long time ago, whose voice helped me when things were mostly shitty. Re-listening to his music in the wake of his death, I'm even more awestruck with the wisdom in his words that I couldn't see in my 20s.

Two good people that I knew died of this fucking disease yesterday. Multitudes more good people that I didn't know died of this fucking disease yesterday.  And it's going to get worse over the next three weeks.  New York might be beginning to get better, but the rest of the country is in for a hell of a time.  More good people are going to die of this.  More good people are going to die of otherwise preventable events because the hospitals are overloaded.

Yesterday was hard.  Tomorrow isn't likely to bring respite.