Knowing someone who is over 100 means death is always seated at the table, routinely inserting itself into conversation, patient knowing the wait won't be long. The day death stands up, clears its throat and gently takes the hand of the aged friend, no one is surprised. Not really. Earlier this month, and just five weeks before his 102nd birthday, my long-time friend and confidante Bascom Biggers III died. It is said that when an elder passes, it is as though a library has been destroyed.
Bascom was 7 when the stock market crashed in 1929, launching the Great Depression. Born and raised in Atlanta, Bascom watched from his father's business on Peachtree Street when President Roosevelt drove by on his way to Warm Springs. In 1939, Bascom was among the crowd of people looking to spy Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh at the premiere of "Gone with the Wind" at Loew's Grand Theater, also on Peachtree Street.
In 1943, after Bascom attended Emory University on an ROTC scholarship, the Army sent him to New York City. He arrived on his 21st birthday and lived in Brooklyn for nearly a year while awaiting orders to ship to the European theater, where he would spend 33 months. Having first subscribed to The New Yorker in his late teens, young Bascom felt sophisticated living in NYC. He took classes at Pratt and went to Broadway shows for the 25-cent soldiers' admission.
After the war, Bascom settled in Cleveland to work with his cousin Laura Riebel who owned a direct-mailing company located near the downtown Greyhound station. He ran the offset presses and over time they took a toll on his hearing — especially in his left ear, which was closer to the ink rollers. He eventually owned the business, which he ran until he retired.
Over the past two decades, my friend and I shared countless dinners (sometimes after attending shows at Playhouse Square or the Cleveland Orchestra), always done Bascom style: We arrived early and stayed late. We did not order food until after we'd enjoyed a cocktail. And we treasured above all else restaurants where we could easily hear one another. When, in 2019, former New York Times food critic Frank Bruni wrote a column titled, "The Best Restaurant if You're Over 50," Bascom and I felt vindicated for disparaging fashionable restaurants with hard surfaces that amplify sound and servers who rush diners. We discussed, among many things, articles in the latest issues of the subscriptions we both had — the New York Times, The New Yorker and The Sun. At a restaurant patio a few summers ago, a couple in their 60s came over to tell us they found our conversation most interesting. We had been discussing a piece on the decades-long misadventures of Dorothy Parker's ashes.
In 2019, The New Yorker published "The Strangeness of Grief" by V.S. Naipaul. The essay meanders the way the best essays do, never going from point A to point B in a straight line, but taking diversionary routes before bringing it altogether in the final paragraphs. It starts with the deaths of Naipaul's father and brother, which occurred several years apart, but then switches to the tale a cat with writing that effortlessly disarms readers. In the final paragraphs the full freight of loss lands heavily on the sternum, leaving only people carved of stone dry eyed.
Not waiting until our next date, Bascom called me an hour after he'd read and digested Naipaul's piece. He and his life partner, Sandy Reichart (who died in 2008), were worshipful, as childless couples can be, to a lifetime of cats, each with names that began with the letter S. After her littermate, Summerboy, died about 10 years ago, Bascom devoted himself to the health and happiness of Sonata, a rare orange female.
On a whim, I once gave Bascom a McDonald's Happy Meal toy. It was a tiny stuffed Chloe, the curmudgeonly cat from the animated film, "The Secret Life of Pets." The next time I saw him, Bascom was giddy. "Sonata uses Chloe to communicate with me!" he said. From then on, Bascom set Chloe on his kitchen counter each night. Every morning, Chloe would turn up elsewhere, sometimes still in Sonata's company.
Equally elderly for their species, I long wondered what would happen to Bascom if Sonata died and vice versa. In the end, it was as if together they had worked out a plan. While Bascom was in the hospital for low oxygen numbers, Sonata deteriorated and the veterinarian euthanized her. A few hours later, Bascom was also gone.
With my science and data-loving brain pushed to the side, I imagine a kindly death guiding Bascom to his beloved Sonata and that they were met by the many, many others, both human and feline, that Bascom loved over his long, rich lifetime.
Contact Holly Christensen at whoopsiepiggle@gmail.com.
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