Goodbye

The city in mourning. Yesterday evening in a long, slow line to make entries in a condolence book on a flower-smothered podium (What was they all wrote at such length?). This morning stapled to a old campaign sign propped on the fence of Adams Park: 'Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.' Today, the wake in Fanueil Hall, surely the line of people waiting in the rain is long, long. Monday, the funeral.

We knew this was coming. He'd been struggling physically for a long time. Out of office now for nine months, his autobiography written, his treatments increasingly burdensome and hopeless, he announced that he intended, in the bosom of his family, to die, and it happened quickly.

Today is, in some religious traditions, for remembering the saints, a term that has been expanded beyond its narrow definitions. In times past, these men and women were venerated, their places of burial visited by pilgrims, their very body parts revered. Alive, they were impressive for the presence of a divine or at least remarkably good power in their lives and actions. Dead, they are testimonies to what God can do, or at least what good things can be done, and inspirational examples.

I've lived in this city for nearly 35 years now. From the time we rented our first apartment in time to have our son till now, the changes for the better have regular and perceptible. The playground where we took our children back then was full of broken glass, the detritus of after hours revelry. Kevin White and Ray Flynn took major steps to bring Boston out of its mid-century malaise. The one who has brought the city, over the last 20 years, to where it is today, a lively, attractive, significant metropolis, the fitting heir of its distinguished past, is he whom we all miss since we heard of his death two days ago.

He left a legacy, both of governing effectively, creatively and without scandal. The vitality of the city remains as a monument, his tenure as an example. But something ineffable is gone. Nowhere in the city anymore does that particular hulking person appear, that unmistakable voice, that sincere empathy, that welcome of all, no matter the color or age or origin or attractiveness, that fierce pride in us as individuals, and in this city, our shared home and hope.

He shook our hands, hugged us, remembered our names, put his head with ours when we grieved, celebrated with us (3 World Series victories!). He loved us, and the awareness of that fact was as compelling in East Boston as in Roxbury, in Charlestown as in Roslindale. Not always impartial or patient, a politician through and through, he nevertheless radiated from beginning to end of his time in office a kind of respect, an affection, an ambition, a regard for us we will never enjoy again. The broadcast is over; the studio is dark. I didn't know I would miss it.

I remember him just last year at the opening of an old electrical substation building in Rozzie Square, a place he'd brought back from dereliction. There he was, hard to pick out in the midst of the large, laughing crowd, leaning on his cane, like the patriarch of a huge, happy clan. Goodbye, Mr. Mayor.