Farewell to Happy Jack

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The following post may seem – in these momentous times – to be a smidgen frivolous. So, let me say first, I have been closely following these last 48 hours the initially wonderful, now increasingly terrible drama on the streets of Egypt (and recommend wholeheartedly the Al Jazeera English web channel reporting live with riveting coverage. They’re just now reporting ‘ambulances heading to Liberation Square amid continuing heavy gunfire in Cairo.’)

All the more reason to take a moment from the onslaught of the daily news – not just the big stuff, but the daily drumroll of murders, car wrecks, greed, malfeasance and mayhem — and remind ourselves of Happy Jack.

Now, I do not know Happy Jack Johnson from, well, jack. But I encountered him upon arriving late to work today after One of Those Mornings. Given the kind of morning the pro-democracy Egyptians woke up to this day, I hardly have a call to gripe. But it’ll explain why this guy named Jack lifted my spirits – and all he did was die peacefully.

So, I’m dashing into work after discovering my Honda with a flat rear tire in the parking garage the night before. I am rescued once again by my favorite company in the world (next to Comedy Central) and rolled homeward on the spare. The flat can’t be repaired, I need a new tire and since some other things need to be done, the total bill comes to $265 from National Tire to get the car back on the road. I wait out the fix with a $4 cappuccino at Panera’s, the only expense that doesn’t make me crabby this bitterly cold morn.

I arrive hours late to my desk on deadline day for my newspaper’s entertainment section. I race to finish my appointed paragraphs along with a feature video I’m editing for a lead story I’ve written for the Sunday Life section – due an hour ago. I check in often via Al Jazeera as Mubarek releases the kraken upon his people. Daily news despair creeps across my brain like the onset of fever. I’m grumpy about the unexpectedly high repair bill, which reminds me of a bunch of other outstanding bills, which flips on the ‘Woe Is Me’ track on the iPod in my brain -  a tune too often in heavy rotation on the soundtrack of my life.

Stabbing a banana into my mouth for lunch, I flip through the day’s Gazette, scanning headlines. There, on page 5A in the obituary section, smiles up at me an Amish-looking guy in what looks like a farmer’s hat. “Happy Jack Johnson,” says the obit headline. And damn, if he doesn’t look like he was happy when this photo was shot. Jack Johnson is a veritable sunbeam of happiness in this photo.

Now, for all I know, Happy Jack Johnson may have been an ironic name, like how they name big fat guys ‘Tiny.’ He may have been a hellion to his family and unkind to chihuahuas and other small living things. He may have stiffed the cheerful waitress who brought him his morning coffee at Bob Evans (I’ll bet it was black). Yet judging from the photo and the intimations of his life that glint up from the words of his obituary, I kind of doubt it, even if he must have had his bad days:

Happy Jack Johnson, 96, of St. Albans, peacefully passed away on January 31, 2001, at Hubbard Hospice House.

The obituary goes on to note the impressive output of offspring he and his wife managed: four sons, four daughters and 12 grandsons, six granddaughters, 30 great-grandchildren and 10 great-great grandchildren.

I am sure Happy Jack had his unhappy, dark times. The obit notes “he was preceded in death by his son, Thomas Johnson, Sr.,” a funeral no man should have to attend. And the obit goes on to give thanks to a niece and her husband “for giving their grandpa the best possible care in the last months of his life” – so maybe there were rough waters there at the close. But the description suggests also that he was in the love and care of his family through his final years on earth, with some aid at the last by the good folks at hospice. A blessing for which we all hope.

Me, I am stopped mid-banana overtop the Charleston Gazette. I’m smiling now. I gaze back at the happy eyes of what I choose to conclude is a true headline. It also may be the only uplifting headline amid the daily dose of gloom: a happy man has died. After a long and happy life, surrounded by much family and much love as he peacefully moved on.

Goodbye, Jack! Never knew you.

At least, maybe just a bit, until now.

~ by Douglas Imbrogno