Hal Wilson’s Blog

Hal, with me (Judy), our Mother and sister Toni peeping thru the fish, Fairfield Manor, Shreveport, LA, 1954

I did not know Hal Wilson the real estate agent, ever buy a house from him, or attend any of the classes that he taught on so many different subjects. And there were a few years when I didn’t see him at all — years when our lives were lived out in separate places — both literally and philosophically: I in CA; he in TN — I as a vagabond hippie lefty; he as a business minded, family-man conservative.

But he was a deeply woven part of my life since my birth, and if our paths branched away sometimes as adults, he remained for me some ineluctable essence of amazement and admiration and ultimately, inspiration – Hal, my brother, a near blur of energy, always moving fast into some fresh whirl of motion borne on a great new idea, business deal, conversation, plan, goal, hope, dream. Even in recent years, after the cancer diagnosis, his daily calendar astounded, beginning as it did at some horrifyingly early hour (we once shared a preference for late nights and sleeping in; still my preference) . . . and more often than not proceeding all the way thru evening and sometimes beyond. Meetings, luncheons, dinners, prayer groups, board meetings, making time for anybody who might randomly drop by his office to talk about anything, everything . . . even when the days began to hold visits to oncologists, Gilda’s Club, infusion rooms and all the myriad medical appointments attendant on chronic illness, he persisted. In these years, I began to see clearly – with a newly sharpened focus that brevity of time may suddenly bring — his profound ability to savor what was unique and rich in each moment, in each person he met, spoke with. The legendary temper (sliding to irritation or disdain at the milder end) that took such umbrage at certain pet peeves (slackers and taxes came in for special treatment) did not manifest itself when speaking of the cancer. He complained infrequently if at all. I told him often that he was my hero, and I meant it. He almost made it look easy.

Hal made me laugh, me at times a tough audience but I did willingly concede his gift for laughter – both in the giving and receiving. He was not a tough audience and I loved – increasingly over the years — finding new stories calculated to make him laugh, or showing him silly pictures on my iPod Touch as I did a few months ago – presenting to him a photo of a large pig I took last summer and getting his gleeful laugh in return. He was one of those rare persons who can appreciate both silliness and real wit in equal measure: one of the countless gifts that ferried him thru his 66 years.

I have a memory of Hal from many years ago: he was an adult with a young family, visiting in my parents’ home and on that afternoon, putting on his helmet before getting on his motorcycle to leave (he had a bike ever since we were kids in Shreveport). But instead of putting on the helmet in the usual way, he put it on backwards and began making strange sounds and stumbling forward and backwards and crashing into the walls. His daughters were there and one said, in a tone that suggested he frequently did such types of things, “oh, daddy.” He was having so much fun, banging into the walls and I remember standing there, laughing, joyfully surprised by such sheer merriment. This is a very happy memory, and one of the many Hal’s I will miss until I see him again. The best memory? The most emblematic? Maybe not, but there was an innocence and joy there, and those are the rarest of qualities, always worth preserving. This one has made me smile for thirty-plus years.

The many Hals. But he was really just one Hal – sane, wise, loving, ethical, kind, curious, generous, funny, smart, determined, opinionated and supremely passionate about everything he believed in and just as often didn’t believe in. His affinity for and delight in laugher emerged from a seemingly endless well of superlatives: wit, charm, mirth, corniness, whimsy, hilarity and verve — to name just a few of the adjectives that I can summon on this late afternoon in spring, when the fact of his passing stuns and grieves me and I hear his voice in my head as I type this – that so intensely vibrant voice that held such exuberance and love for life that my own life becomes finer and richer in the telling.