The movie Atonement (2007) pivots on a long tracking shot of the hero, Robbie, walking through the nightmare scene at Dunkirk as the British Expeditionary Force flees France on the eve of World War II. On the testimony of Briony, a young girl and a future novelist, Robbie was convicted of a crime that he did not commit and was separated from his lover, Cecilia – only hours after they consummated their long-simmering relationship.
Robbie was released from prison when he volunteered for military service. While fighting in France, Robbie was wounded at the level of the heart chakra. After a long trek across the countryside, the hopes of Robbie and his companions soar when they discover the beach at Dunkirk bustling with soldiers returning to England. Those hopes were cruelly dashed when they encountered the chaos of the disorganized retreat.
After Robbie starts his Via Dolorosa, the achingly beautiful and wistful strains of Clair de lune by Claude Debussy sound in the background. The music reflects the melancholy of resisting necessity. Later, we learn that both Robbie and Cecilia die before they can resume their relationship.
At the end of the movie an elderly Briony seeks to “atone” for betraying Robbie and her sister, Cecilia, by reuniting them within the fictional context of a novel. Is the gesture valid? Does it promote healing? Or is it a blatant attempt to relieve the conscience of someone consumed by guilt?
***
In 2003, I met Vern Hunter at a discussion group called the Socrates Café, which met weekly at a Coco’s restaurant in Tucson. We established an immediate rapport and sealed our friendship at one meeting when we both sat on the same side of a long table. One of us made a comment that the other found worthy and afterward we leaned forward at the same time, caught each other eyes, and smiled.
Vern was exceptional. Twenty years younger than his nearest sibling, Mother Helen launched him on his upward trajectory by sending him to an exclusive prep school without any assurance that he would accepted. He was and rose with seeming ease from the projects of Dayton, Ohio to the precincts of Harvard College from which he graduated with a master’s degree in 1978. Subsequently, he provided understanding and comfort to friends and patients in his practice as a psychologist as he simultaneously dealt with his own pain.
Vern was about six feet tall and carried himself with assurance and grace. With rare exceptions, he dressed in black and exhibited a sense of style that is rarely found with today’s emphasis on casual dress. Many times, I witnessed women – and men – complimenting him on his clothes, especially the fedoras he wore with an anachronistic elegance.
Today, wearing a fedora is often an affectation that is meant to signal irony – think of pop stars who wear fedoras with faded or torn thrift shop clothes. Vern’s sense of style precluded such displays. He wore fedoras to signal his sophistication. At more leisurely functions, he donned baseball caps and for a short period of time he wore the caps backward, but soon reverted to his time-honored practices. Regardless of the type of hat, Vern carefully combed his hair after removing them to eliminate any tell-tale evidence of poor grooming.
His manners were courtly and reflected his upbringing in the Seventh Day Adventist tradition. Over time, he jettisoned his religious beliefs, but kept the courtesy he learned as a child. When appropriate, he delivered well-formed, impromptu disquisitions on literature, philosophy, psychology, movies – particularly those of Hitchcock – as well as stories from his fascinating life.
With an incandescent smile, Vern put people at ease. In a low, measured, raspy voice – partially the result of asthma – Vern spoke with deliberation and intention. He was instinctively drawn to people in pain and would provide a shoulder to lean on as he asked gentle questions, dispensed sensible advice, and provided comfort.
Patient with everyone he met, Vern collected friends of all classes, races, nationalities, religions, and political parties effortlessly. When we went to restaurants he habitually asked the waiters, “What is your name?” and engaged them in short conversations that signaled his sincere interest. Invariably, he would greet the waiters by name the next time.
***
At a meeting of the Socrates Café near the end of October or early November, 2003, Vern seemed solemn as he slumped uncharacteristically at a side table. He pulled a printed email from a folder. Before reading it aloud, he quietly explained that the anniversary of the death of his oldest son, Jon, was approaching.
Jon had been murdered a few years earlier and Vern moved to Arizona partly in an effort to mitigate the grief. The email consisted of exchanges between Vern and one of Jon’s girlfriends as she attempted to deal with nightmares occasioned by the approaching anniversary. Tears came to my eyes as Vern read the emails with control, even detachment. Later, Vern told me that he appeared on a radio talk show after Jon’s death and asserted that he did not want the state to execute his son’s murderer if found and convicted.
***
In due course, Vern and I agreed to meet at 4:00 p.m. on Saturday afternoons at the Arizona Inn in Tucson where we indulged our mutual interests in literature, philosophy, and movies along with addressing personal issues that inevitably arose. To a degree that I found amazing, Vern told me everything about his life. Being considerably more reticent, I was much less forthcoming, but leaned heavily upon his steady hand when tragedy entered my life. He provided solace when my mother died.
After eating and discussing the events of the past week, we would retire to the library where we read articles from The New Yorker or books like The Pilgrim Hawk aloud to each other with frequent interruptions to discuss thoughts raised by the texts. Later, we formed the Philosophy Study Group at which we listened to 30-minute tapes describing the thoughts of the greatest minds of the western intellectual tradition and discussed the modern implications with a group recruited by our friend, Renee McGuire. Over the course of two years we listened to 84 lectures. Vern was the star attraction and, after completion of the philosophy curriculum, the group morphed into The Literati Club, which Vern led.
Vern and I shared a love of movies. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of all things cinematic that I could not match. We often attended one (or more) movies before and after our Saturday meetings. His memory of scenes was uncanny and he was able to quote dialogue with stunning accuracy as he used these talents to enhance conversational points.
When discussing my romantic entanglements, he often leaned over conspiratorially and quoted in his hoarse voice a monologue delivered by Ronny (Nicholas Cage) to Loretta (Cher) in Moonstruck:
Come upstairs. I don't care why you come. No, that's not what I mean. Loretta, I love you. Not like they told you love is and I didn't know this either. But love don't make things nice, it ruins everything, it breaks your heart, it makes things a mess. We're not here to make things perfect. Snowflakes are perfect. The stars are perfect. Not us. We are here to ruin ourselves and break our hearts and love the wrong people and die!
He would lean back and chuckle, with a twinkle in his eye. Vern loved, absolutely loved, the messiness of the human condition – the condition that I with increasing futility continue to fight and hope to reform.
We were opposites in many ways. He was a black man who ascended from poverty to attend the most prestigious university in the world. I am a white man descended from a racist grandfather who was raised in middle class comfort and barely graduated from a public university. He was open and forthcoming. I am reticent and introspective. He was liberal. I am a moderate conservative. In spite of our different backgrounds and opinions, we developed a deep, mutual respect. I loved the man like an older brother.
***
On the afternoon July 20, 2011, Vern bought a ticket to see a movie at a Tucson theater, entered the lobby, and suffered a heart attack. An ambulance took him to a nearby hospital, but efforts to revive him failed. He was 60 years old. He would be disappointed that he did not get to see the movie.
I last saw Vern about three weeks before his death on June 28, 2011. On that day, I travelled to Tucson on business and met him at the Arizona Inn for dinner where we brought each other up to date on our lives before driving to his house in Benson. After moving to Tempe, I stayed several times with Vern when traveling through southern Arizona and slept on the Murphy bed in his guest bedroom.
After I went to bed, Vern, a night owl, would retire to his study located in an addition built onto the back of the house and connected to the guest bedroom by a window. Normally, I sleep in two or three hour shifts and on several visits I recall looking through the window in the early morning hours to discover Vern sitting at his desk, reading. Often he would go to bed at 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. or about the time I was rising to take a bicycle ride before returning to Tempe.
On June 28th, contrary to his normal practice, Vern did not retire to his study after I went to bed – he stayed up watching TV in the living room. Once during the night, I rose and noticed that he was staring into the distance – sort of like Robbie on his fateful journey on the beach at Dunkirk. He had been unemployed for several years and I attributed his depressed demeanor to frustration regarding his job search. After listening to stories from others, I wonder now if Vern had a premonition of his fate.
Vern was particularly attracted to the tenets of existentialism and the philosophy of Nietzsche. He accordingly took full responsibility for his life and acknowledged the pain that he caused others – especially those he loved. My heart goes out to his wife, Cindy, and his son, Jason. He told me often that he loved them.
He was understandably haunted by thoughts of death. His son was murdered, his older brother was murdered, his parents and two of his sisters were dead. In addition, he witnessed at first hand the damage and destructive impulses exhibited by patients and friends. He often quoted the following from A Farewell to Arms as a distillation of his overall philosophy:
The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.
After his death, I was surprised to discover the amount of space that Vern occupied in my mental filing cabinet. I continue to file things away in anticipation of telling Vern – ideas prompted by articles, books, movies, events, people. Neither of us believed in an afterlife and slowly I am coming to terms with the fact that I will not be able to share those thoughts with my best friend.
As a fatalist, I am always a little surprised upon waking up in the morning. Although I was not shocked or consumed by guilt or remorse after Vern’s death, I feel implicated. I could have done more to help him as he helped others. Vern and I often discussed the betrayal that is at the heart of the human condition. We inevitably fail each other. The question is how do we redeem betrayal – in short, can we atone?
On some level, Vern and I aspired to be writers – like Briony in Atonement – and his death fills me with disappointment at promise unfulfilled. His talent deserved more exposure. He had been working on a scholarly article involving the theories of Freud and the types of people who colonized the western United States. It saddens me that it will not be published. However, Vern had a valid reason for not publishing more: he was busy helping others. On the other hand, I have simply failed my talent. And for a solitary, introverted man there is no greater pain.
Inspired by his mother, Vern had a broad knowledge of classical music and we discussed the feelings aroused by Clair de lune in Atonement: the haunting beauty as it plays softly, plaintively, insistently during Robbie’s final walk echoes my sense of loss at Vern’s passing as it also gestures toward redemption. I cannot face the reality of a world that “breaks everyone” without the possibility of atonement (at-one-ment) – however fleeting or unearned.
Clair de lune means “moonlight.” Debussy took the title from a poem by Verlaine with the same name:
Your soul is as a moonlit landscape fair,
Peopled with maskers delicate and dim,
That play on lutes and dance and have an air
Of being sad in their fantastic trim.
The while they celebrate in minor strain
Triumphant love, effective enterprise,
They have an air of knowing all is vain,—
And through the quiet moonlight their songs rise,
The melancholy moonlight, sweet and lone,
That makes to dream the birds upon the tree,
And in their polished basins of white stone
The fountains tall to sob with ecstasy.
Vern would not have wanted his death to cause undue grief. Appropriately, his constantly ringing cell phone – his electronic link to friends in need – identified him as Bodhisattva (“one whose being is light”). Taking responsibility for his life in the face of necessity – the iron rule of Ananke to which he deferred – and “knowing all is vain,” Vern strove to promote atonement and understand the human condition as dimly illuminated by moonlight – Clair de lune. I will miss you, my friend.
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