Go In Peace
He was a crotchety old soul in a body that failed him, with a sharp keen mind and plenty of salt.
I met Bill Rees at the small indie bookstore I ended up working at. The owner warned me, with a twinkle in his eye, that Bill was “a little set in his ways.” I suspect Clyde wanted to watch the sparks fly, already guessing I have little patience for fools. But Bill wasn’t a fool.
He was bright. Very bright. I was never bored once, listening to him talk. I gathered he had a few degrees and had actually taught philosophy at some university or another. But what I really enjoyed was seeing him warm up and work on religion.
By the time I met him, Bill had developed a passion for exposing the follies that go along with people believing God is an invisible judge peeking into people’s windows. He was excited about book by Robert Ingersoll, which we ordered for him when we could find them. Any book that came in about the fraud of religion was set aside for him to take a look at. He would lean on the counter, peering fiercely out from under his eyebrows, and proceed to demolish some theological idiocy with the same relish kids use to break open presents on Christmas Day.
Yet I wouldn’t say Bill was an atheist. Rather, I would say that he was an Enlightenment man in the old sense of the word–that he believed reason was the salvation of man. Common sense and empirical evidence were the tools of reason, the one cause that had never failed to make the world a better place. Say what you will about Eurocentrism and Descartes’ chopping-up of the universe–still, reason has incalculably improved the quality of life since the Dark Ages died their hard, grasping death. (They still may not be dead, but reason is still fighting the good fight.) I think Cicero and Epictetus would have found common cause with such a man.
My clearest memory of Bill is of him leaning against the bookstore counter, peering at me like Pan from the woods, his eyes old before their time. He grumbled. He muttered. I’d grown used to it, and grinned. When he finally began to take his leave, I told him it was always a pleasure to see him–somewhat despite himself.
He chuckled. He liked that. When he finally shuffled out with the complete lectures of Ingersoll in his bag, it was into a rare bit of sunlight on an otherwise-rainy day, the leaves of the tree in the parking lot gilded and liquid light on the surface of the roads.
I have not seen him since. His body finally gave up its insistence on living last Saturday.
He will be sorely missed.
I hope, wherever he is, that there is a good bookstore there. I hope they were waiting for him at the door with a cup of coffee and a stack of the books he didn’t have time for while he was working on earth. I hope that wherever he is, he is still cheerfully glaring at folly over the rims of his spectacles and gleefully, verbally poking to get a reaction. I hope he is comfortable. I hope he is at peace.
Both my reason and my heart tell me that he certainly is.
Related posts:
