Shaping Stewart

In her sixties, my mother picked up puzzling as her main hobby. I say, “hobby”, though what I mean is her coping mechanism. Rest assured; I could count on her to see through the highs and lows of each day, given that there are still pieces to put together. My mother could leave no task, project or mission incomplete. I, on the contrary, had a history of fragmentation; I could be given a whole picture but, fail to see or understand it, until I dismantled it piece, by piece. This was my hobby and my coping mechanism, especially when it came to the untimely death of Stewart Willow.

I first met Stewart eighteen months ago, when driving upon his property with his step-daughter in the passenger seat of my car. I say, “step-daughter”, though she was very much his daughter through-and-through; and he, very much the only father she ever knew. It was Spring and the weather had sprung and nurtured life back into the grounds of gardens spreading across the land. A large, barn-style house was cozied amongst a group of deciduous trees, and beyond was a barn of the same colour; red. I parked the car, looked out the driver’s window to see a man descending the steps of a rear patio; he, too, looked rouge.

I turned to my sweetheart and smiled weakly, first impressions were not my forte. Wiping the perspiration from my palms to my pants, I stepped out to greet the man now walking toward us with a clear glass of beer in hand.

“Hey Dad!” my beloved embraced him; she was a tall, full-figured woman, though in his arms she was but a little girl. Turning to me, she introduced him,

“This is Stewart.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.” I said, extending my open hand.

He looked at his empty right hand, wiped the palm in his pants and gave me a friendly shake with a smile on his face. His glass was near-empty and I could tell he was feeling it.

“Wanna beer?” he asked.

I looked to his daughter for sign of approval; her blue-green eyes contrasted starkly to his red skin. You’d swear she had brought a world of oceans to extinguish his flames. She smiled, nodded and allowed us to lead the way up the stairs and into the barn-style house.

Once inside, Stewart handed me a glass and beckoned me to follow his descent into the basement; his workshop. The rich smell of malty aromas hit me on the first step, and each step thereafter revealed what I came to see as an immaculate setup; perfectly polished beer fermenters, brite tanks, pumps and beer kegs in harmonious alignment. I did not comprehend every piece and part I was witnessing but, I knew I was in the presence of this man’s homemade masterpiece: a brewery.

He smiled widely, now, recognizing the amazement across my face with every look and glance I took. I was never much interested in this sort of thing, nevertheless I was genuinely impressed. Not only impressed by the brilliant system Stewart had established, but also by the remarkable amount of care he invested. It was evident; from the major equipment to the valves and fittings, everything gleamed with his pride and joy. He opened a nearby freezer and reached in.

“Tell me what ya think!” he said with the biggest smile I had yet seen, extending his chilled beer line toward my glass. And with that, I tried some of the smoothest beer I had ever tasted, even to this day.

Prior to meeting Stewart, I had accumulated a sense of him by the series of stories told to me by his daughter throughout our budding courtship. I learned that he had been married once before, and had been terribly betrayed by his wife. Sorely damaged, he made a clean cut from the childless marriage, only after he surrendered half of all that he had owned. It was the second time a woman had broken his heart; the first being his mother, when she succumbed to cancer after his seventeenth birthday. With the passing of his mother, so passed his childhood, and in its place, a bull calf was born. Not yet a man, he yearned to embody the strength and protection he so desperately needed in this new world; one without a mother’s love. After three months of grief, his horns started out delicately. After three years of struggle, his horns were fully formed. Stewart no longer felt the need to move around his obstacles, but instead to move through them.

Despite this, decades later, his first wife had struck his vulnerability and a scar twice formed over his heart. All that this bull had brought him was now split in half, atop of the massive blow to his spirit.

It was a year or so later that he met Rosae, my betrothed and her younger twin brothers. In seemingly no time, Rosae nurtured life not only back into his barren gardens, but also into his scarred heart and pained soul. She, and her three children, needed the strength and protection of the bull Stewart embodied; and he freely gave it to them to the furthest extent that he could. Life had been hard on Stewart; the obstacles he mercilessly stampeded through had inevitably wounded and damaged him. I could hear it in the stories told where in which he sought total control, lost his temper, drank too much and talked too little. It was without question; Stewart had taken on responsibilities his heart completely enveloped, but his hands mostly fumbled. It was in his retirement that these fumbles became more frequent and more severe. Sadness became despair; anger became rage. The more the children grew, the more they conflicted amongst one another and with him; each year the bull’s pen became that much smaller.

I knew Stewart was not perfect when I met him, but neither was I. Ultimately, the family’s love glued the four of them together, and I respected him for continuing the path forward in spite of his own imperfections. He knew pain, and I trusted this, at the very least, to be our common ground.

Every time I visited the barn-style house from that day, I was given a renewed tour of the ever-improving system Stewart had hopping in the basement. Every time I departed I noted every piece had its place in his project’s puzzle, and I pondered the pieces he was missing within himself.

It was a Sunday and the sun tore every cloud that threatened rain out of the sky. I watched the rays reach through the window and illuminate his near-empty glass. My sweetheart buried her face in me, weeping uncontrollably. My eyes went beneath the glass to the upholding side table, across his knife, glasses and cell phone, down the leg of the table and over to where he lay, lifeless. His red skin had grayed and I was choked up on what words to say. There was nothing to say and everything to feel.

Sometime that morning, Stewart had dozed off in his chair as per routine, though it was Rosae who discovered, hours later, that he would not be awakening. Cold to the touch, she knew in that instance that he had passed. He was fifty seven and succumbed to massive heart failure.

When the coroners arrived to remove his body, I watched Rosae as she fell deep inside herself; the quietest implosion I had ever witnessed. In his wake, it was his impacts that were remembered. Stewart’s perfectly imperfect life had impacted countless others in an invigorating way. When he would lower his head, scuff the ground and snort, those who surrounded him cheered and shouted, knowing his strength and charge would obliterate his next obstacle. These acts would draw the attention of people all over; people he never truly knew or who never truly knew him. Strangers and loved ones, one in the same, cheered for his pending victories. Now, free from his pen and the stadium of life, the raging bull could rest.

Outside of my own grief of Stewart, I felt unsatisfied. I had not been able to see the entire picture of this man, nor gather all the pieces I wished to know. How could I put this to rest with him?

I sat with my mother, now watching her more closely than ever before. Her hands sometimes fumbled the pieces she chose, and I realized she was nearing the completion of her current puzzle. The day was departing and I coaxed her to start yet another with me. She saw the pain on my face and smiled, as though she could see straight into the window of my mind.

“It isn’t the picture, the pieces or the process that keeps me going, you know.” She said to me, “It’s the time we have together.”