I really didn’t want to have to write this and am still pretty headlong in denial and bargaining over it, but one of our original coaching team members and former elders, David DeSonier, has died. I had a fascinating relationship with Dave because he was one of those guys who intimidated me with his goodness. There aren’t many of them and generally it takes someone who is exceedingly friendly and brotherly for me to feel at ease around them like Chris DeWelt. I can think of a couple like Dave — it took me years to open up to Dr. Mark Scott and to take his classes the second time around because I was so intimidated by someone I perceived to be both brilliant and exceedingly kind. Dave was another. The difference, I think, is that once I had finally gotten up the courage to take Dave up on his offers for me to call him any time and ask for advice, his mind started to break from Lewy body dementia. I had already been, in a roundabout way, personally affected by this disease because it caused my childhood hero and the best friend of Harlan Ellison — Robin Williams — to take his life. So I was familiar. 

I think these two things combined kept me from calling him more often and I really missed out because he was a wonderful, wonderful man. This is what we mean by bargaining — not that everyone’s making Faustian deals with the devil or Kate Bush style “if I only could make a deal with God and get him to swap our places.” Though that happens too. Rather, what we normally mean is that we say “shoulda, coulda, woulda” because at the time of someone’s death, we realize unrealized potential. We see missed timelines. We wonder about what might have been. 

I wonder what wisdom and goodness I missed out on simply because I was too dadgum scared to pick up the phone and call one of three or four men in the entire world that I respect enough to shy away from. 

That should say something of his stature in my mind. Of his study, of his reading, of his faith, of his kindness to us, of his steadfast support, of his advocacy, of his “getting” Bell Hammers when we performed it first in Joplin and not stopping his support, but doubling down on it. I expected to lose patrons when the book came out. Instead, I gained stronger advocates like Dave.

And so, as I have a habit of doing when a death affects me personally, I wrote a threnody for him. I titled it Threnody for a Bell Hammer not merely because Dave was one who rung out the music of the spheres in everything he touched (as is the main theme of those called bell hammers in the book), but because of his name:

A sonier in French is a bell ringer, as in Carol of the Bells at Christmas or the Salvation Army ringers or the hunchback of Notre Dame, who played the church bells. It’s not only a matter of time keeping, which must be strict and efficient. It’s also a matter of art and song. Dave had both in spades. Think of Dave when you see them this year. Think of the line in Chesterton’s intro to The Man Who Was Thursday, which says, “fools we were in motley, all jangling and absurd, when all church bells were silent, our cap and bells were heard.”

Threnody for a Bell Hammer

England’s bells in eighty days will
Ring a ringer’s thanks:
Frenchman died this week in honor —
Frenchman — and a Yank.
Soul of hammer strikes the darkness
Iron lends to bells.
Rang he at a desk or forest,
Lightened or in hells.

Father, he, of three quick reasons,
Grandfather of eight.
Wise and kind and great of giving —
Read at dawn or late. 
Pushing keys on saxophone to
Ring creation’s song.
Same with camera buttons, budgets,
Oil well or wrong.

When his body hit the sod, at
10 on Central Time.
I was here at home in Brooklyn
Working on this rhyme. 
Something hit the Ozark sod and
Shook the Ozark chert. 
Appalachia touches Ozarks,
Then hits Hudson dirt:

There I stood in quaking wonder
Polishing my prose,
Knowing though I’m want to wander,
Wander heaven knows.
None can wander more than He who
Wandered down to hell
Showing He Who Wanders means to
Make all wanderers well.

Is it true that when we die
A final note is rung? 
Is it true that all our moments
Harmonize what’s sung? 
Is it true our memory is
In Mnemosyne’s
Mind and on her singing tongue, the 
Person of the Word? 

All our songs are in the stones? The
Bells save ringer’s strikes
So on the day they hit the chert, we
Hear the dirge of knights?
I hope that when my dirt returns
All breathless to the dust
That I am such a friend and elder
Helping where I must.

Yes, in England, Ringing Change is
Algorithmic art.
Science knows of making things that
Ring inside the heart. 
Artists make what isn’t known, but
Soon will sing a song:
Sonier waits to ring us in when
Right is All, not wrong.