If I were as articulate poetically as Edna St. Vincent Millay, I could say exactly how I feel, but I am not gifted so. It is one of her poems that very closely conveys my feelings concerning Rick's very sad and untimely death. I would like to express my feelings thus:
Dirge Without Music
Edna St. Vincent Millay
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains, -- but the best is lost.
The answers quick & keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,
They are gone. They have gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
Although I have seen Rick but a couple of times since he graduated from high school in 1974, I have had cause to remember him and other Holiday Inn fellow workers whenever I sit at my piano. It was a communal Christmas present from the kitchen and dining room staff to me Christmas 1972. I did not have a piano at the time so, when I had any free time, I would go to the storeroom and play the piano in there. I still have that Christmas-gift piano. I play it daily. I reflect upon the lives whose paths crossed mine and who cared enough to give it to me. Rick had an interest in poetry which gave us common ground, along with J.R.R. Tolkien's Hobbit and the Ring Trilogy and the Moody Blues. I remember that Rick wrote a poem that he read to me. The idea was a comparison of the effects of a tornado likened unto a blueberry milkshake being made in a blender. I thought he had a very clever idea! Rick and the other teen-agers I worked with made me proud to have been accepted and befriended by them. For this reason Rick has always been held in high esteem by me. Blessed be his memory.
Peder A. Legried