“Has anyone ever told you that you look just like Tommy Makem?”

As the man standing in front of me broke into a smile, his eyes crinkled. The smile turned into a wry grin as he stared at me a bit speculatively, and tried to not squish the contents in the two large bags of hot Weeksie’s take-out food he had just picked up at the counter.

“Well, yes, I have,” he mumbled as he nodded his head, his eyes twinkling; he edged a bit closer to the door.

The signature grin and the evasive answer were a dead giveaway! Before me stood Tommy Makem, in the flesh. I was delighted!

“Hey! Wait! If you’re really Tommy Makem, I want your autograph!”

Already not very tall, he seemed to get a bit shorter as both his shoulders and expression sagged in unison. He looked meaningfully at the bags in his arms. With a grin, one of my companions grabbed the dear man’s bags for him, as I fished out a pen and paper. We had him! Autographs all around!

We talked about it for weeks afterward.

That was the first of many occasions I had to speak to Tommy Makem, our local legend. Mr. Makem was from Armagh, Ireland, and sang some of the most wonderful Irish songs I’ve ever heard. He was often on television and stage, performing as Tommy Makem and the Clancy Brothers.

A few years after that first meeting, I had the opportunity to have an extended telephone conversation with Mr. Makem. He was warm and friendly … a lot like a good neighbor you’ve known for years. You were apt to run across him almost anywhere. The last time I saw him was a number of years ago at a local shoe store.

His website bio describes him well:

He has also been known for many years as the modern day Bard of Armagh and is regarded around the world as “The Godfather” of Irish music.

Armed with his banjo, tinwhistle, poetry, stagecraft and his magnificent baritone voice, Tommy has been mesmerizing audiences for more than four decades.

I was saddened to learn that Tommy Makem died yesterday. I hadn’t even known that he was sick. Apparently he died at his home in Dover, NH. He was 74. I’m sad to realize that I’ll never hear him sing in person again … or run across him in town as I go about my errands. He will be sadly missed.

My sincere condolences to Mr. Makem’s family and friends – and to all of his fans.

He was trusted with people’s deepest fears … their deepest, darkest secrets. He was trusted to bring healing to those who were considered beyond being helped. He was trusted to love – unconditionally – everyone who crossed his path.

And there was a reason for that trust.

Wherever he went, whoever he touched, remembered him – his touch … its effect on their lives.

I saw things come through this man which defied my understanding. The cripple walked, the blind saw … an old Irish lady regained a lost life … hardened spirits were healed … he fluttered on colorful butterfly wings and spread his glow to all who asked … and he was trusted, and loved.

I know, because I trusted him, and I loved him.

I was drawn into his circle of love and healing, and helped him to feed his broken and despairing followers … and as I watched him reach out his healing hands, in awe I trusted him, and I loved him along with all of the others.

His butterfly wings carried him for a while to a green country across the sea, and while he was there, he was trusted, and he was loved. He became so trusted and so loved … that he needed protection from his adoring faithful, who would certainly have taken him apart to bring pieces of him home as a talisman – a talisman that was capable of giving life where there was death, and of bringing hope where hope had long since died …

And I missed him while he was there, because he was my spiritual father, and because I trusted him, and I loved him.

When he finally fluttered back home, I drew him into my circle, and tried to cover everyone around me with his healing touch … because I trusted him, and I loved him.

Fleeting friend … heart breaking … but still, I trusted him, and I loved him.

Then came a day when bastions of trust were crumbling from one end of the world to the other. Although the absolvers of men’s deepest secrets became repositories of tales never repeated, their own secrets began to emerge … first in tiny dribbles, and then in a nauseating flood of mind-numbing reality.

My friend … my spiritual father … seemed to be caught in this deluge of filthy, muddy waters … and I cried for him.

And still, I trusted him, and I loved him.

Night time only lasts for a while, and then the sunlight crests the horizon of our awareness, and casts its long, revealing rays on what was once mercifully hidden in the darkness …

With shattered trust, I still loved him.

They tore off his wings, bound his hands, and encased him in mortar and stone. From a colorful butterfly that everyone wanted to grasp, he had become a source of derision, a thing despised … an outcast.

And still, I loved him.

But the love had changed … it was no longer a love full of wonder and awe, but the sad love a friend feels for another friend when the inevitability of past actions comes home to crush the soul.

For months, I tried to bring a bit of joy to this friend, encased in mortar and stone … because I could remember that this friend, this human being, in spite of his mistakes, had given so much of himself to so many in such an unselfish and healing way …

It hurt to think that the hands which had brought healing and life to some, had also brought pain and brokenness to others. But don’t we each, in our own way, follow that same path? Don’t we each, in our own way, bring life and love to some, and hurt and pain to others?

We are, none of us, above the human condition …

He told me: “The chorus keeps echoing in my mind, over and over. I wish I remembered all the words!”

For the first time since I’d known him, I was unable to give him the music he asked of me … but I told him the words, and watched them impact his understanding. He realized that he wasn’t alone, he wasn’t forgotten … even as his now frail body weakened, falling to the harsh conditions surrounding him.

Too soon afterward, when I went to drag just a bit of sunlight into his gray, chill world, I was told that he was no longer there. His spirit had broken the fetters, grown new wings … and no one would ever encase him in cold, hard stone and mortar again.

And I thought about him through my tears, and I wondered what he had felt just before the end … what he’d thought … if he’d realized that he was finally getting his wish – to be free again. I wondered if he knew that I understood, because I am human too, and that in the end, I still trusted him, and I still loved him.