Great expectations

January 25, 2020

Jimmy's death is hitting me hard as I should have expected.

you don't create mythical Heroes like Odysseus and not react when they die.

 I still have not gotten over that last weary moment on the park bench in Little Falls in the Summer of 69 when he and I just sat there after one of the most amazing weekends of our lives.

It was as if he and I knew that moment was the beginning of a journey and not the end a journey that finally came to a grinding halt this week and now I feel it all.

Although Frank brought us together, I understood in that moment that my relationship with Jimmy was something special and beyond just being a friend of a friend.

Jimmy will never go down in history as a president of some great corporation or this Icon of music or even perhaps a great artist, his story is the story of a life and an influence that goes beyond anything I can fully comprehend although I feel it deeply.

I spoke with Garrick yesterday and got more details about the sequence of events that led up to Jimmy's death.

Jimmy spoke with his sister Patty on Saturday, telling her he wasn't feeling too well.  but this wasn't anything dramatic and so apparently nobody thought much about it.  he also told a local storekeeper where he does business that weekend that he wasn't will but did not elaborate.

Frank Melchoni spoke with Jimmy on Monday; they talk frequently.  Jimmy did not mention anything about not feeling well.

Frank called Tuesday and got no answer then called Wednesday and got no answer again, then called around suggesting someone should go over to the trailer to see if Jimmy was all right.

Apparently, a neighbor had found Jimmy's body on Tuesday but did not know who to call.

Patty and John apparently found out about it Wednesday evening and called Garrick to tell him that Jimmy had passed.

Late Thursday night sending it to Garrick's work email. John said he, Patty and Jimmy's other sister Maureen were going down to the trailer Friday to two secure it.  they had already made arrangements with a Netcong Funeral Home to have Jimmy cremated.

So, Jimmy passes from this mortal coil like a Viking and there's no way to know if that is the way he actually wished to leave.

Garrick said that Maureen Patty and John now face the task of sorting through the music and the art that Jimmy left behind the last legacy that we do not know what it will become over time

His real legacy is in the rest of us, he turning some magical key that turned us from one thing we presumed we would become into something else and whether that new thing is better than we would have had it hard to tell.

Jimmy once said that the Beatles ruined us turning us away from the mundane lives of our fathers and mothers to something else, dangling this fruit of expectation in front of us which we have chased for the rest of our lives never quite able to grasp it.

The same maybe said for having known Jimmy because he raised the expectations of our lives and it is uncertain whether we have actually lived up to those.