An Obituary

I don’t read obituaries, much.  The obits in our local paper lack color, and in no way present any of the zest for life individuals who have passed beyond what we currently ken may have had, or squandered.  Colby Cosh has penned an obit for Terry Johnson, a fellow “flophouse” tenant and writer, dead at age 44.  A short portion of Colby’s paean.

"All things considered, he did well to make it so far. Terry was so defenceless against the basic demands of life that he never, to anyone’s knowledge, owned a winter coat during the time he lived in Edmonton. A fellow housemate made an annual ritual of frogmarching him to the barber to get his Karl Marx beard and his spirit-of-’68 hair hacked at. No piece of furniture in the common area of the house lacked for holes made by his cigarettes. He had the barest acquaintance with bathing and probably none, in his adulthood, of dentistry. He made do, defiantly. Somehow he acquired a whole wardrobe of other people’s clothing; one got the distinct impression he didn’t get it from Goodwill or Value Village, but that he just somehow gravitated home from the pub wearing a bowling shirt with “Larry” on the breast pocket."

Posted by on 04/09 at 02:53 AM

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