I often say that age distills us-- that as we age, we become, more and more evidently, who we always really were. The pretenses of youth, the rough edges of our working years-- all the outer trappings-- burnished off until the real character gleams through. The shine of what was always there underneath the momentary impressions we might have had of the person, at whatever age they were when we first started to know them.

I think Doc Watson particularly exemplifies this.

When a "burnished" person of such an age eventually passes on to the other side-- whatever that side may be or whatever one's individual conception about it may be-- there is so little of the worldly, fleshly person left that the only way they COULD live any longer would be to simply slide effortlessly into that state of permanence where spirit continues, unfettered. They "graduate" to really living forever-- as whatever they always were, inside.

Theologically, this is one way to approach an understanding of pre-destination and other tantalizing wonderments of spirituality.


But for one who has had the pleasure of seeing Doc several times, and knowing some of the people whose music sprang from their experience of Doc, it's not theological. It's palpable. And it reminds me to know and bless those old folks in whose midst I live and move and have my being, in my own backyard.

That's another way Doc will live forever-- through his musical grand-babies of course. But also through all of his age-mate peers who never heard him sing or play a note: people who have that same tough gentleness burnished by age, and the people they've affected in some of the ways Doc Watson affected us music-types.

I know that there's pain and inconvenience mixed into the aging process, but when I think of Doc I hope I'm getting burnished, too.

~Susan