A broad smiling bass known as MacIntyre

Exhausts gallons of air to respire.

When he takes in a breath,

He threatens the death

Of fifty percent of the choir.

I wrote three limericks for my college room mate, Bruce MacIntyre, on his twenty-first birthday in 1969. I had completely forgotten these compositions, but Bruce recalled them at our 20th Reunion. He had saved them for twenty years.  Bruce had the reserve of an old Scottish Presbyterian, but he could be very sentimental. No one cherished college connections like Bruce, and we stayed in touch through our Fiftieth Reunion last year.

Bruce was busy organizing parties and fraternity events during our Fiftieth, and I barely had time to talk with him. But he met my second wife, Victoria, and he knew the story of our coming together after the death of my first wife Kathy. Most of my story came through Christmas letters we had exchanged over the years. We had not shared the same personal space since the 20th Reunion.

Bruce and I had that same sentimental, yet slightly formal relationship.  Bruce could get very excited about music (he majored and was a Professor of Musicology), and he was close to his older brother James, but our relationship had the limitations of a smug Evangelical Christian and a mainline Presbyterian.  We had shared three years as room mates and attended church together on occasion, but we did not share what I would call “faith stories,” stories of how our faith impacted our lives.

Of course that kind of talk is not common among men, certainly not fraternity brothers, who had more of a “hail fellow well met” relationship.  Bruce had moderated extended discussions online with our fraternity comrades for years before our CoVid-delayed Fiftieth Reunion. Our most emotional memories were of professors and their previous impact on our lives, after they reached the end of their years. Some of us were reaching out to the missing members of Gryphon, the fraternity name we gave ourselves following a break with the national Lambda Chi Alpha.  But we kept our composure in our recollections and status updates.

But following the Sunday Memorial Service in the Chapel, Bruce came haltingly up the aisle to greet me and Victoria with a hug and not a few tears. It was the most tender moment of our fifty-five year relationship. He spoke some garbled words about being happy for me, and I could only assume he meant my marriage to Victoria.  We were both stunned a little, to be nakedly sharing our happiness, and I can hardly recall what I said.

I must have written Bruce about the return-leg of our trip from Hamilton, because he alluded to it in the next e-mail exchange. He wrote apologetically of his emotional greetings, and I reassured him I was warmed, more than shocked, by our nearly incoherent greetings.  He explained his lapse and made his point in the return e-mail.

Probably we lose some of our emotional self-control as we age, but it is refreshing and bonding beyond the sometimes formality of room mates. We do not know how much more time of mobility and coherence we might have, so momentary warmth and vulnerability is welcome. We are getting closer to the ideal intimacy of brothers as our time is waning.  I am grateful for those unplanned moments of Grace, because it speaks the love that has so long been unspoken.

https://wtucker.edublogs.org/2022/06/17/reunion-pilgrimage/