I enjoy re-reading the Pulitzer award winning novel “Lonesome Dove” by Larry McMurtry since it reminds me of those times of exceptional companionship born of intense work in uncertain times. I feel that way about Vietnam and also when a team from our episcopacy worked together after September 11th. Mike Stewart, a member of that original bunch, died last week and his funeral will be tomorrow.
In the story Woodrow Call and Gus McCrae, and others, are retired Texas Rangers and going to seed in the hot, dusty border town of Lonesome Dove. Stirred by a new adventure they set out to start the first cattle ranch on the pristine Wyoming frontier. It is a thrilling tale and the references to their prior days of fighting Comanches and other ribald exploits become the backdrop to the easy banter between two old friends who know each other’s faults and rely on each other's loyalty.
That post 9/11 team of Knowlton, Blackburn, Stewart, Henritzy, Means, the Szigethys, Zanger, Meairs, Carr, Bercovici, and the Packards assembled in those uncertain September days post 9/11 and fanned out to give crisis intervention to any community that absorbed the trauma of that fateful day. We went from New York to Washington, DC and too many places to count in between. Long afterward we relied on the shorthand of those bonding times; there wasn't much we wouldn't do for each other.
The final chapters of Lonesome Dove are filled with Call's journey to take Gus's body back to Texas for burial. It's heartbreaking and heroic as he journeys across 2000 miles of the Great Plains with the coffin of his friend.
Mike Stewart was one of the few who didn't mind telling me off so we went in and out of relationship but we always found each other once more. That said more about his stamina than mine. After his last significant move to Tennessee we re-embraced yet again and the camaraderie of the old days of "riding together" was still there. He was excited to establish an award winning disaster response program for his new diocese and pestered me about supplying chaplains' ball caps for those whom he had just trained. He lived into what a deacon was--had a heart for it—and constantly hastened us all to hurry up since there was always more to do.
Two weeks before his death he called me with the exciting news that he was engaged to be married. We talked about everything and our friendship glowed from those eternal embers lighted eight years ago. In the Lonesome Dove novel Call never says much to Gus about love, loyalty and character and I think he regrets it after his friend has died. I know I do. Before leaving on the Wyoming trek there’s a scene of Gus prying loose a sign over their old place. Fashioned in awkward Latin, he wanted it for the road ahead, it said, “We are forever changed by the lives around us.”+gep
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