In recent years, I've had two friends—or something-like-friends—who were in the latter half of their octogenarian years. Both died in the past few months. This edition of my newsletter is dedicated to them and my memories of them.

charles west wilson, 1932—2021

I never knew how to describe Charles West Wilson — my friend, my employer, my acquaintance? I met him probably in 2008 when my piano teacher, Professor Gretchen Dekker of York College, arranged a concert to be held in his home that I participated in. Charlie's house — a mere five minutes' drive from my own — did not have any pianos as we think of pianos. Charlie, who was not a musician himself, collected and restored a prodigious collection of harpsichords and spinets and fortepianos mainly from the 18th and 19th centuries. The house was not a mansion, but you might refer to it as an "estate." A plaque to the side of his often-unlocked door noted the estate was called "Chestnut Hill" and is apparently on the National Register of Historic Places.

Charlie lived alone, never having married, and he did not cook. His house had several fridges and at least one microwave, but no functioning kitchen. When I worked with him, he seemed to purchase cakes and cookies at random from discount grocery stores, though where he bought them from I could never figure out. He had a complete and up-to-date knowledge of every church providing free meals to seniors within a large radius.

But Charlie could afford to have a certain level of blatant disregard for his body: he was incredibly spry the whole time I knew him. He was so seemingly indomitable despite his unhealthiness and advanced age that I really thought the only way he would ever—could ever—die was if one day he just stopped. I felt a twinge of fear every time he didn't answer the phone right away, half-imagining random heart attacks and fatal falls.

That was in 2017, when he was 85. I didn't know until this month that he spent the past year or so battling lung cancer. I called him the day I learned he was dying. He was genial but a bit tired-sounding: thanked me for my call and quickly maneuvered the phone call to an end. It was the last time I spoke to him. He was more comfortable than anyone else I've known with short, unprompted phone calls, which I attribute to his having come of age in the 1950s. I tried to teach him how to use his computer — he did email, and he was a common sight at our small local public library even after buying his laptop — but he would have preferred to keep using his mechanical typewriter.

My work with Charlie was assisting him with various things relating to a doctoral thesis he was working on. He threw his effort into finishing it in his final days, and I'm told that he succeeded, although his sister is still working on finishing up the bibliography. Hopefully he will be receiving his doctorate soon, albeit posthumously. (Truly, an inspiring level of procrastination.)

Charlie was not a "good" person, but he was genial and generous in his badness. We never figured out how he made his money. Years ago, he said he "cut red tape" for a living; a newspaper clipping I found in his basement called him a "retired economist"; he once alluded to working on a cargo ship traveling between Germany and Australia in his 20s (if I recall correctly). He graduated with his bachelor's from Oberlin and yet, from what I can tell, remained on the political right.

I wish I remembered the content of his thesis better so that I could describe it to you. The general idea of it was to compare the six extant spinets manufactured in the 1600s by John and/or Charles Haward. I forget which, or whether it was both. One of these spinets was owned by Chas. Wilson himself, and for a reason I forget, I was present when he unboxed it at his house after it arrived in the mail. (This was in 2008, a month before I turned 10.)

Here's the intriguing thing about Charlie's Haward spinet: the famous English diarist Samuel Pepys also, at one point, owned a keyboard instrument bought from the selfsame Mr. Haward. And Charlie firmly believed that the "espinette" mentioned in Pepys' diary in 1668 was the same spinet that eventually made its way to Red Lion, Pennsylvania. He said he couldn't make this technically unprovable claim outright in his thesis, but that he wanted to strongly imply it. No previous owners had seemed to remark on this, but Charlie found etchings of numbers on the instrument case arranged in what appeared to be a failed attempt at a magic square next to a ladder-like diagram of numbers that resembled a diagram in a book about music by René Descartes which Charlie claimed Pepys would have owned a copy of — essentially, if Charlie's theory were correct, Samuel Pepys was experimenting to see if numbers in a magic square could create musical harmony. And the handwriting on Charlie's spinet seems to match that of Pepys' original diary.

So perhaps I was noodling around with Twenty One Pilots songs on a keyboard that Samuel Pepys played in the 1660s.

Charlie doesn't seem gone quite yet. When the house is sold and the instruments shipped away to various auction winners and all his papers and notes collated in one place to be never read again, then he will be gone. But I suppose the world will be better with his possessions dispersed and continuing to bring joy to people, rather than if they were kept without their caretaker in an empty house.

dr. joseph glass, 1930—2021

If I had earned a PhD and my surname also happened to be "Glass," I would have insisted everyone call me "Dr. Glass." But Joe only ever wanted to be called—well, "Joe."

Joe's obituary is long and impressive and contains any number of facts I did not know about him in his life. I understand that he wrote a good portion of it himself, but that it needed a good deal of editing, given that his death came wholly unexpectedly. Joe struck me as the opposite of Charlie: he always seemed in good health, went to the gym once a week, and presumably ate well; but he moved at a slow and measured pace in his old age, often using a cane. On January 3rd, he made a concerned comment and sat down, and that was the end. We don't know what exactly happened. His wife Susan, a retired nurse, told me she wanted to know (being a self-proclaimed "nosy nurse"), but ultimately decided that her curiosity wasn't worth the invasiveness of an autopsy.

The church I attended throughout college had a congregation on the older side, and not many people stayed around after the service to chat. But somehow — I don't remember how this happened — Joe befriended me, and he became the one person I regularly talked to on Sundays. He had been a professor of geography at my college, Millersville University, but retired decades ago. Susan, who is only in her 70s, was in the church choir, which I accompanied on piano. It probably took me some time to realize they were married.

I asked Susan if I could possibly crash at their place for a good portion of my senior year only because I knew where she and Joe lived. When Millersville Community Church welcomed its new lead pastor, the choir met with Pastor Kerry down at the farmhouse owned by choir members Ed and Judy — but this was not on a walkable road and I didn't have a car, so I somehow ended up walking to Susan's house and riding with her to the meeting. My plan had been to commute from Red Lion my senior year — but having a couch to crash on during weeknights would be a relief.

Coincidentally, or providentially, Susan and Joe had more than a couch. Their entire basement was practically a functional apartment, which they let me live in not only for a nominal fee, but for a whole semester longer than I anticipated (due to my having failed one class and dropped another).

I wish I could say my time there was a true lesson in intergenerational living and friendship. The fact is that I continued to retreat into myself, being antisocial and messy and — goodness, I don't even know what I survived on. Probably animal crackers and canned meat. I continued to chat with Joe at church, but I didn't talk to him or Susan much, if at all, the rest of the week, despite literally living in their basement.

And then COVID came. I was working at McDonald's and taking two classes (only one was in-person) and, as established, living in Joe's basement. I believe he had just turned 90. For better or worse, I quit my job and moved back in with my parents to finish up my degree in their basement instead. Better not to take any chances, I said.

I visited Joe and Susan once over the summer to pick up a few last possessions of mine that hadn't fit in my car the first time around. We talked about my burgeoning job search, and I believe Joe recommended I get some newspapers and check out the classifieds.

They gave me my graduation present early, when I left in mid-March: all the money I had given them for "rent," returned to me.

I could make up for lost time, I told myself as I left. I could come back, glean all the wisdom (or at least hear all the anecdotes) I had failed to listen to when it was readily available to me. On some level, I knew even then that would never happen. I just didn't realize quite how soon I would be disillusioned.