A final goodbye
When you have to say goodbye for the last time to someone you have known for years – as was the case with the funeral of Today’s employee Lyndon Dusty’ Nelson yesterday – emotions tend to run high. Everybody processes the death if a loved one in a different way – and that’s okay, because these emotions are highly personal.
You don’t make an appointment with death; it strikes far too often completely unexpectedly, as was the case with Dusty who became the victim of a traffic accident in French Quarter. Such events are disturbing, to say the least, but they also push us with our nose on our own mortality. This is a door where, sooner or later, we will all go through.
Beyond that door, there’s peace I’m sure, Eric Clapton sings in Tears from Heaven. That is a comforting thought.
But as we mourn Dusty’s departure, each and every one in his circle of family, friends and colleagues has memories of the time when he was still alive.
In his honor I should mention a sympathetic email I received from Mary smith, a retired national Geographic journalist who lives in the lowlands. Dusty delivered our newspaper to her. Mary wrote that the news of Dusty’s death had saddened her and her husband Tom. They liked and respected him for delivering the newspaper in such an out of the way place.
At Today, Dusty would often come to my desk, seeing if there were any cookies to be had. If I had them, I shared them with him without saying that he was actually eating part of the lunch of a desk junkie.
What I remember best about Dusty is that he always had a smile, always a story to tell. One of the last times I saw him I was driving from the French side to my work. Just ahead of me was Dusty on his ATV, driving to his job as an ATV-tour leader after having taken care of his newspaper distribution route in the early morning hours.
At the roundabout in Belvedere Dusty took the bend – not at high speed, but artfully and relaxed on two wheels – the master of his own and so unique universe.
That image will stay with me for a long time, if not forever.
On behalf of staff and management at Today, one more time: rest in peace Dusty.
Hilbert Haar,
Editor-in-Chief @ Today
