Caught off guard by depth of loss
The footsteps were heavy. The glasses were dark and unusually prominent. The man ascended the stairs with an unenviable task. If there was an annoyance that he could not command my full attention at the first, he did not let it show. As I conversed with another customer he walked around the shop, perusing stock. When I could I greeted him properly, finding the titles he was nominally after. Only when his three rental selections were made did Stuart come to the point. Even then the news was imparted with a minimum of melodrama, as though it were possible to mitigate tragedy by conveying it casually.
Clara Lange was dead. Someone I had met only a handful of times in my life was no more. The slightness of the acquaintance should have softened the blow. It didn’t. If anything, if this were in any way possible, it seemed to make it worse. It’s almost obscene to think of yourself in such moments but I was briefly guilty.
Clara was someone that I knew through other people. In a sense, she was a friend of friends. A musician, a wonderful violinist with a voice of power and rare beauty, she played in a local jazz band, an ensemble whose membership varied from gig to gig. When Clara was available – and that availability was in part relative to her illness as much as other musical commitments – Art Gecko were at their best. She was their strongest vocalist and her violin work inevitably brought to mind Ste´ phane Grappelli. What made Clara special as a performer was that her craft – or her art – was a direct extension of her personality. The warmth of her playing directly reflected her warmth as a person.
Will Rogers famously quipped that ‘‘I never met a man I didn’t like.’’ You sensed that was true of Clara, whose connection with others was instant and profoundly empathetic. She put you at ease. Your concerns were her concerns. This was all the more remarkable in one battling cancer. Where many would become insular and justifiably morose, Clara was open and radiated light. She often went missing during band breaks, getting caught up in conversations with punters, yearning to connect with them not only as audience members but as fellow human beings.
When Art Gecko offered to play our wedding there was no one more excited than Clara. It was more than just a vicarious pleasure. She believed in love and she believed in marriage. It was as though our nuptials somehow reflected and reinforced her own relationship. The joy felt in being on a secret plan whereby Janine would join the band for a special number was palpable. As with her fellow musicians, it mattered little that she was
What made Clara Lange special as a performer was that . . . the warmth of her playing directly reflected her warmth as a person.
not getting paid.
Clara Lange was only 46 years old. She enjoyed a Christian faith. No doubt this helped in putting her own suffering into perspective. You can imagine that solace was taken from the thought that she was off to a better place. In her funeral notice it reads: ‘‘Gone to be with her Lord and to sing with the angels in Heaven.’’ Louis Armstrong firmly believed that the afterlife promised ongoing duets with the angel Gabriel, ones in which Satchmo would necessarily take the lead. It a pleasing to think of Clara engaged in a celestial jam with Grappelli and Django Reinhardt, in that special quarter of paradise reserved for jazz immortals.
Those of us without religion are challenged by the idea of premature death. Whatever your philosophy or belief in cosmic karma, it is exceedingly difficult to reconcile the demise of the good and the pure with the continued existence of the vile and the selfinterested. How is it that someone who only brought happiness to any she met can be cut down in her prime whilst the likes of Robert Mugabe and Harvey Weinstein persist at large? An ordered, structured or just universe is at odds with the facts, at least as far as we can discern them.
I must be but one of literally hundreds, if not thousands of people, who were touched by the kindness and generosity of Clara Lange. Such numbers do not soften the unfairness of her passing but they do heighten her example. You brighten the world by paying attention to others. It’s something most of us fail miserably at. For Clara, who had more reasons to focus on her own problems than anyone, it came as naturally as breathing.