Mountebank Blog

Thirty years is a lifetime.  A generation.  I can’t say whether I still think of him and of the loss every single day.  But it’s close to that.  This year somehow feels harder than many, but I might say that every year.  But the anti-semitic murders at the Pittsburgh synagogue, among other things, seem to be intensifying the pain (a conservative shul, and a connection to HIAS).

I’ve marked this date on this blog many times, but I don’t think I’ve ever really written about the day itself on here (although I have for myself).  I don’t know that I will.  But this year, 30 years to the day later, I remember one thing very powerfully.  Like in Auden’s “Musée des Beaux-Arts,” I’m often struck by the every-dayness of things. How a whole universe goes on indifferent to moments of tragedy or destruction (or joy).

30 years ago today I was in the midst of an argument about nothing.  About washing dishes and whose turn it was to do that.  And that’s when the call came and I couldn’t even understand what was being said.  And when I did understand I made a sound that I had never made before and hope to never make again.  And how things like a softly falling snow, or a chalkboard with a taco special, or a feather sticking out of a down jacket, or a rental car, things that are so ordinary and common and ongoing are now forever etched.

Musee des Beaux Arts

W. H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

R.I.P. Scott Daniel Ugoretz.

February 24, 1964-October 28, 1988

Lots of things change.  Grief doesn’t go away.

R.I.P. Scott Daniel Ugoretz.

February 24, 1964-October 28, 1988.

R.I.P. Scott Daniel Ugoretz.

February 24, 1964-October 28, 1988.

It seems a strange thing to do on a sad anniversary, but tonight I’m taking my class to see Carmen at the Metropolitan Opera.  It was just the way the schedule worked out.  Last night talking to my parents on the phone I said that Scott would have enjoyed the opera, but then after getting off the phone I remembered that he and I went to the opera together several times as kids, and Carmen was one of the operas we saw.

I wonder if that was in my head somewhere when I made this reservation.  It was some kind of program for elementary school kids to be exposed to opera at the San Diego Civic Center.  I don’t remember how old we were–I think I was probably 8, so Scott would have been 7.  Or something like that.  I can actually picture the costumes and set, and remember talking to him about it afterwards.  In fact (and I’m not proud of this) we both agreed that the woman singing the title role was too fat.  And we actually wrote a letter to the opera saying so–that we couldn’t believe someone so fat was believable in the role of Carmen.  It’s embarrassing to remember that we were that shallow and immature and …but we were 7 and 8 years old.

We got a letter back from someone at the opera company (probably in the marketing and communications office) who told us (in quite a snotty tone) that they chose singers based on their singing ability, not their superficial physical attractiveness.  Even at the time, I remember that we felt chastened.

This was part of a time when we had these unlimited public passes.  We could travel anywhere in San Diego, and I remember trips to Balboa Park, to Fashion Valley mall, to the main library in downtown San Diego, and Horton Plaza–which at that time was extremely seedy.  Sailors, homeless people, prostitutes and petty criminals and vendors.  We traveled everywhere and I think that freedom (we had no money so mainly just went places to walk around and look around) made both of us comfortable in cities and new places–and we experienced something similar in our trip to Europe together, the last summer before he got sick and lost the person he was.

We were also big on writing letters then.  I remember in addition to the letter to the opera a letter to San Diego Rapid Transit praising our usual bus driver.  I remember his name was Floyd Chapman, and he was friendly and protective and funny.  The SDRT responded to us, too, and told us that they would tell Mr. Chapman and his supervisor about our letter.  We were so pleased to see his big smile and he shook our hands the next time we rode his bus.

Scott and I were close–partners in letters, in exploring, in talking and arguing.  For so many years.  On anniversaries like today, and in fact often still, I remember that closeness and the times we had together before he was gone.

I wish I could talk to him today.  And many days.

An impossible number to really comprehend.

R.I.P. Scott Daniel Ugoretz.

February 24, 1964-October 28, 1988.

R.I.P. Scott Daniel Ugoretz.

February 24, 1964-October 28, 1988.