I've not 'shown' this 2007 photograph of "Bird" Lowe, because she, grieving over the death of her only daughter, Cheryl, is not displaying a 'look' that her friends and family would like to 'remember' her by.....Now, that some time has passed, and the need for more ameliorative 'takes', I'm remembering how she replied, in an aside to me, as I held my then-ever-present camera a couple of feet away, as her good friend and neighbor commented, "You'll outlive us all, Katherine!"..... This 'look' says otherwise........She could tell 'the camera' how she felt, knowing this portraiture would outlive her laughter to please others.....We are but beings, briefly illuminated against the illusory permanence, by the light of Living......My morose thoughts this morning are fueled from having, late last night, turned 'on' the TV.....only to view the final moments of Death In Venice.... As, Gustav von Aschenbach, hair blackened with dye, expires on a beach chair as he gazes out at a metaphorical Tadzio, to the soundtrack of Mascia Predit's rendition of a Mussorgsky lullaby. Saddened, I touched an arbitrary button on the 'remote', only to be 'taken' to the final, lugubrious scene of another Bogarde film, in which Teddy "Bare", deliriously drives a coupe over a steep cliff.....and, yesterday, the first of her three sons, John Wharton Lowe III, hanged himself. Bird had anticipated this event, twenty years ago......
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MY COMMENT ON HIS OBITUARY PAGE: "I met Johnny during Freshman Orientation, in Sept. of 1963, in McGill Hall of Vanderbilt University, where he, Sam R. Sadler and Bert Bottorf initiated a contract bridge 'foursome'.....Johnny and I both majored in 'English' with B.A. degrees, and amost two years later, he and another friend from Emory, convinced me to move to Atlanta......Johnny, William Hilton "Bill" Mello and I soon located a suitable home, in Buckhead, that we shared for a year or so....I was 'best man' at Johnny and June Conaway's wedding.....but, we seldom saw one another after the Lowe's moved to NYC, where 'John' was working on his PhD at Columbia......I last saw John when he came to Atlanta for his niece's graduation from Emory, years later and once, at his friend Malcolm's house, where he later died, and where we reminisced on a porch swing as the sun set..........I never 'knew' Professor Lowe.....but, only, the younger version of that man......Johnny Lowe, when he was still listening to his favorite 'musical', Funny Girl...on 'repeat'....while absorbing 19th Century Novels by the dozens and beginning his eventual career, writing about 'Writers'......"
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