Last Sunday morning, the members of my small social circle of baseball fans were greeted with the shocking, terrible news that Bud Rosenfield, our good friend and a fine man, had just died, cause not communicated. Bud was (AND I HATE USING THE PAST TENSE LIKE THIS) a wonderful man—lively and fun, and smart and passionate. Also young, meaning he was younger than me–or at least looked it. In his career as a lawyer he advocated for the disadvantaged, and a few years ago was appointed to a prestigious-sounding post with glowing words from the Governor of Minnesota. Bud leaves behind a wife and two children and many friends and admirers.
My emotions have progressed from shock to anger. Bud, you’re not allowed to die like that, especially in the middle of the baseball season. There’s got to be some bylaw in our league constitution, or if not, then how about the U.S. Constitution, or the Gideon’s Bible? THOU SHALT NOT DIE THAT QUICKLY!
I have been entertaining a rather quaint and juvenile notion, which is that Bud is not dead, just misplaced. Like Captain Kirk in his space suit, fading in and out of the scenery in that classic episode, “The Tholian Web.” Or like the playing card that Penn and Teller ask an audience member to select so they can hide it in a fish. Or like the wristwatch that I had lost a couple months ago, and that turned up just the other day. It’s a fine watch that was a present from my wife that one day I just couldn’t find anywhere, and then I continued to not find it, week after week, up until the six-year old hands it to me after claiming it from God-knows-wherever-it-was.
Now you see it, now you don’t, and here it is again.
We had a butter dish. A glass butter dish, very classy, and obtained either for free or a pittance from a yard sale or what have you. All along, I knew the butter dish was doomed. It was just a matter of when. I knew it was doomed because glass butter dishes in this house are always doomed, at least when we insist on using them. Our house is populated with dogs, cats, and a little boy. Each butter dish was stored in a thin shelf at the top of the refrigerator door, high above the tile floor. The recent glass butter dish lasted longer than I had expected. But crash to the floor it did, I believe because it was left wantonly on the counter and was attacked by one of the more aggressive of the cats, who likes butter.
The current replacement butter dish is a cheap plastic piece of crap.
Philosophers who are much, much, much more skilled and accomplished than I have mused elegantly on the fragile beauty of human life, and I shall not attempt to do the same. At least for now, I’m more of a mind for bluntness. We are here, we do what we do for as long as we do it, and then we’re gone, off to an after-life that I don’t truly believe exists.
Time, time, time, see what’s become of me.
Do you like the Bangles? How about the Go-Go’s? And Blondie, of course. The best music came out of the 1980s, and fortunately I have it all on CD’s for playing in the deck of my 16-year old (and counting) Saturn Vue. I’ve got a road trip coming up, and I’m planning a stop to see friends in New Jersey, then an evening with the Baltimore Orioles at Camden Yards, followed by further shenanigans involving my teenage son and his friends and the rest of the family. I’ve ordered a new baseball cap for the occasion.
That’s all for tonight. May Bud’s memory be a blessing.
