Column: Even in death, the ongoing gift of a forgotten stereo
Soon after I met him, my father-in-law told me something that stuck with me: “I know I’ll die alone.”
That may sound grave and self-pitying, and I guess it was — but it also wasn’t. My father-in-law had a way of making even the wryest observations with a glimmer and a grin. It was one of the things I liked about him.
He had absorbed life’s bumps and bruises as much as anyone, and he understood that things don’t always work out the way we hope or expect. He knew there were consequences for that. But he was also blessed with a son and daughter who had made at least some peace with who he was, and never left him fully alone. Whenever he went to the hospital — he had recurring health problems — my wife was there to visit. He was phenomenally lucky to have a son who could, and chose to, support him financially.
So, no, it wasn’t quite fair to assume that he would die alone.
But it turned out he was right.
It happened a few weeks ago at his assisted living apartment, on a Saturday. No one is quite sure what happened. But during a wellness check on Sunday, building staff found him in bed. We got the call that night.
Cleaning out the apartment fell to my wife and I. We kept a few of his shirts, his well-loved ’50s-era White Sox cap, a few books and CDs. (He inexplicably had two copies of “Kind of Blue.” I kept them both.)
Most everything else went into bags and boxes to head to the secondhand store. That included a small bookshelf stereo in the back of a closet — a CD player-receiver combination with detachable speakers. I didn’t give it much thought as it went into the giveaway pile.
A couple of Saturdays later, I drove the stereo, along with the clothes, books and CDs, to the secondhand store for donation. We kept the stuff that felt important.
Along with everything else, I loaded the stereo speakers into a massive plastic bin inside a receiving area at the store. Then I went back to the car to get the stereo, which sat in the same box where it was kept in the back of my father-in-law’s closet. (Why he never unpacked it after moving into the apartment a year or so ago, I have no idea.)
I picked it up and gave it my first hard look. It was a decent little system. It would fit nicely into the finished basement of the house my wife and I bought this summer, where our kids spend ample time running, building, drawing, playing and schooling. It’s a basement where we’ll no doubt spend plenty of time during the upcoming COVID-19 winter.
Without any idea of whether it worked, I gently returned the stereo to the back of my car. Then I went back into the loading area of the secondhand store to reclaim the speakers.
Between work and kids and life, the stereo stayed in the back of my car for a couple of weeks. It needed a good cleaning. When I finally had an hour to devote to the project, I hauled the system in and attacked it with cloths and sprays and wipes and — what do you know — we had a nice little stereo. But did it work?
I powered it up on the kitchen counter, plugged in headphones and pushed the power button. To my surprise there was a CD inside. I didn’t hit eject — I pushed play.
The first two seconds — a silky guitar line and the soft punch of horns — told me exactly what was in there: Al Green’s Greatest Hits.
I moved the stereo to the basement, where my wife was playing with the kids. I knew the kids would be fascinated with the new addition — a thing with buttons and a remote control that lights up and plays music will do that for a young audience. I connected the speakers, plugged it in and hit play. Once again Al Green whirred to life. The first song on his greatest hits collection? “Tired of Being Alone.”
“I’m so tired of being alone, I’m so tired of on my own, won’t you help me, girl, just as soon as you can …”
It was a bit of cosmic commentary perhaps — my father-in-law’s fear of dying alone suddenly intersecting with Al’s soulful croon.
But in reality, it was just the last CD that my father-in-law had popped into the machine before he moved to that assisted living apartment. It’s not hard to imagine him listening to the good Reverend Al while packing for the move, shuffling around his old basement apartment amid towers of boxes and singing along.
And here we were, a year later, my kids dancing gleefully, entranced by the music and the fun and the sheer perfection of Al Green. They reveled in it all the way until dinner.
My father-in-law was the one to thank for the moment. It was a shame he couldn’t have known — he would have loved it. But he unknowingly proved something vital: Even when we think we are most alone, we find a way to keep giving.
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