I heard yesterday morning that Ric Masten had died. His long reprieve is over.Nine years ago, he was given three months to live. He wrung those "extra" years out with much effort, deliberation and support. What everyone had been preparing for had finally been accomplished. . . and well!
I was notified through an email from a list that has been going out to update people of his status. It was originally his mailing list for his weekly, "Words and One-liners".
Before I received the notice I saw a response my mother had made to the announcement that his daughter, Jerri, had sent to the list. Jerri had written that Ric had died at 11:50pm Friday night, with the family around him, singing.
His obituary is here.
I was disappointed that I hadn't followed my urge to go down to the canyon on Friday. I let the excuse of my brakes being in poor condition, stop me, though I knew that could be overcome. In fact, I came to understand that it was part of the story, that I must go because my brakes weren't working. Who I was, when I lived in Big Sur, would not have let that stop me. No one, in that state of mind, would let it stop them. I knew that I needed to go and that there was no replacement for not being there.
I drove to Monterey and realized I needed food, which meant stopping at Whole Foods, which was complicated but accomplished. I headed down the coast with my video camera on board, not knowing what I might find. When I arrived at the top of the grade three miles up, Chris Hansen, Ric's son-in-law and Jerri's hubby, was sitting in his truck and there was a shuttle sign in back of him and I wondered if there was some huge congregation of people and he was shuttling people up to the house, but no, it was the neighbors who were having an event at their home, up higher on the road. Chris was waiting for the morgue's van which was coming to pick up Ric's body. I waited with him and when they arrived, I threw my camera in the back of the truck (where it stayed, unused), after parking my car part way up the hill and walked/ran behind the van, hoping that I wasn't going to be too late to participate in whatever was happening. I breathlessly pulled myself up the rock walkway that someone, probably Billie, had painstakingly built and which had not been used for sometime. I knocked on the door and saw Jerri, April, Ellen (Ric and Billie's daughters, Gaia (Ellen's daughter), Tom (Ellen's husband), Ricky (Stuart's son), Chris (Jerri's husband), Warry (Ric's brother) and who I came to know were the two men from the morgue.
Ric's body was laying in the bedroom, cleaned and wrapped in a beautiful quilt, tied with his own ties. He looked like a poor wax impression of himself. It was the emdodiment of lifeless-ness. Billie was lying in bed near him. Most likely the same place she was when he died. Her awareness goes in and out, but she recognized and greeted me as soon as I walked in room and was lucid the entire time I was there. I was told I was just in time and after spending some time taking in the scene and the reality of what was happening, we sang "Let It Be a Dance", one final time. and then wrapped him in a sheet put him on a stretcher of sorts and about eight of us four on each side, carried him out through the hallway, squeezing through the doorway, his feet into the living root and then his head out the front door. As Warry remarked, "He's not here! That is just the box he came in." I think that Warry possesses every bit of the wisdom and wit of Ric, perhaps more. I have not spent enough time with him. I hope to change that.
We transferred his body to the mortuary's gurney and then took some moments to release him before they pushed the wheels over the uneven ground and placed him in the fancy Dodge Caravan. I spent some time going around the house collecting photos that I could use for a video project, of Ric and the family. I want to edit some of the tapes of the monthly poetry readings along with some of the Big Sur footage I have shot and see what I can come up with. It was good to feel that I had trusted my intuition and that it had gotten me where I needed to be. I vowed to try to stay in that place where I could feel it talking to me.
I was given a copy of Ric's latest book of Words and One-Liners, which carried a subtitle, "Not Dead Yet!". The shipment had arrived on Friday, when that statement was still true.
Tom and Gaia, soon left, Ricky had taken off earlier and the remaining six of us, sat down and ate a salad that Chris had made and some lasagne made by a neighbor down at the bottom of the canyon. Neighbor seems such a flexible word. Billie sat at the head of the table. At one point, before we sat down, April mentioned how we sounded like grownups talking. There in that room where we had all been children together. I felt it.
I looked across the table through the years and realized how connected I am to these people. How important that bond is. Ellen had mentioned earlier about me being the "other brother" and how surprised she was that I had arrived when I did. I was deeply honored by her recognition of my "other brotherhood". It again validated my intuition.
I have gained a great deal from my relationship with this family. It is not simple. It is complicated and unconventional and creative and I often asked myself, when I was younger, "How would they do it?", when I was looking for a creative response to a problem, or situation. It would expand my possibilities. Not yet ready to point my wheels home, I drove down the coast to Big Sur, as the sun was just above the horizon, out there in the mist. The bridges at Rocky Creek . . . Bixby . . twisting across Hurricane Point in the wind . . . Pico Blanco . . . This first time in 78 years the sun would set on a world without Ric Masten singing, breathing, pissing, moaning and chuckling at himself.