My Cousin Bruce

Like everyone else who knew and loved him, I was shocked and saddened by the tragic news of Bruce Willardson’s unexpected exit from this world.  Since then I have been reflecting on Bruce and the remarkable life he lived and my relationship with him, and one thing has become abundantly clear:  throughout my childhood, from my first day at kindergarten to my high school graduation, Bruce was my unacknowledged guardian angel.  It seems odd to me—embarrassing really—that it has taken me a lifetime—and my good cousin’s death—to recognize what now seems so obvious.         

 A little background might be helpful.  Bruce and I were bound by blood (we were second cousins), birthdates (he entered the world in June 1953, two days after me), and geography (his childhood home in the foothills of Encino, California was half a mile away from mine).  However, our most powerful and enduring connection was religion.  Bruce and I were the only Mormons in our grade in a school that was mostly Jewish.  Mormons, in our suburban neighborhood, were about as common as polar bears.

I would like to say that we were great defenders of our faith, junior Abinadis who stood on the rooftop of Lanai Road Elementary School boldly preaching the restored gospel of Jesus Christ to our Jewish brethren.  In fact, we lived double lives.  At church and at home we practiced our religion openly. praying, reading scriptures, and so forth.   At school, however, we referred to church only if absolutely necessary, and even then we spoke in a simple but private code:  “Are you going to the thing Wednesday night?” the thing being whatever church activity happened to be forthcoming.  We knew that any use of Mormon jargon like “Mutual” or “Family Home Evening” or ‘fast offerings” would minimally elicit raised brows and more likely incite relentless teasing.  We were like co-conspirators or secret agents desperately trying to conceal our dual identities.  I even had two names.  At school I was Mike but at church and home I was called Barney.  Bruce, however, was always Bruce, or to his closest friends, he was simply “The Brucer.” 

Although we shared the same faith, Bruce and I were opposite sides of the coin.  I was the proverbial bishop’s kid:  loud, obnoxious, short-tempered, brash, reckless.  One objective observer described me in three words: “hell on wheels.”   Bruce was everything I was not:  level-headed, patient, generous, kind, artistic.  He was a paradox.  He always appeared so laid-back, the prototype of California cool, but even when he was reclining in an easy-chair with a glass of chocolate milk in one hand and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the other, watching old re-runs of  Leave It to Beaver, you could almost see the creative muscles laboring in his head. If still waters run deep, so did Bruce’s imaginative genius.

Bruce didn’t wear his religion on his sleeve, but he carried it in his heart and lived it in his daily dealings with an often hostile world.  He unwittingly taught me great life lessons:  compassion, sacrifice, loyalty, and most importantly, friendship.  We were raised on the comic satire of MAD magazine and the soul-demolishing sarcasm of Don Rickles.  Following suit, I often took cheap shots, anything to get a laugh.  Bruce taught me a better way, that humor can be used to harm or heal and he always took the high road, aiming his barbs further up the food chain:  politicians, actors, athletes, and celebrities were fair game; the weak or vulnerable were not. 

Bruce was by no means a childhood saint.  He didn’t float a foot above the ground with a halo over his head.  He indulged in his fair share of mischief:  planting water balloons under the scoutmaster’s sleeping bag; lacing the dessert with Ex-Lax at scout camp.  Kids stuff.  As young deacons, after passing the sacrament, we sat in the front-right pew in a conspiratorial little pack amusing ourselves during the marathon two-hour meetings by drawing caricatures of the speakers (his were brilliant, true originals; mine had the awkward flair of kindergarten scrawl).  To this day I contend that Bruce cut his creative teeth on the back side of those sacrament meeting programs.  

We were raised in the tumultuous, anti-establishment, Do-Your-Own-Thing Sixties.  Black Power.  Red Power.  Woodstock.  Burn the bra, ban the bomb, stop the war. There were a thousand contrary voices, and I was tuning into all of them.  Bruce listened in as well, but he was more discerning:  civil rights, yes.  Free love, no.  He probably didn’t realize it at the time, but he was my moral barometer for most trends.  Did The Brucer give it a thumbs up or thumbs down?  Bruce was also my anchor.  Whenever I was on the verge of spinning out of control, he reeled me back in and steadied the ship.    He didn’t do it with self-righteous sermons or by waving a CTR ring in my face and calling me to repentance.  He did it first by modeling classy behavior.  If that failed, he resorted to what I call The Brucer Look.  Whenever I espoused some hazardous scheme or hare-brained philosophy, Bruce would stop whatever he was doing--playing the guitar, sketching, watching TV—and his face and hands would freeze.  His brow would lift a bit, his eyes shifting sideways to meet mine, holding them for a moment.  Then his poker-face would elicit an almost imperceptible grin that spoke the wisdom of ages without uttering a single word.  In today’s vernacular, his silent reprimand would be translated, “Are you absolutely totally certifiably freaking crazy?”  And then I would smile, take a few steps back from the ledge, look sheepishly and stupidly at the floor, and live to scheme another day.

In this way, Bruce was my guardian angel, and never was this more apparent than during my senior year of high school.  A few months earlier, my mother had died unexpectedly, leaving my father with seven children, including one unruly seventeen-year-old (that would be me).   He remarried shortly thereafter, but step-mother and I didn’t get along.  We were like a cat and a dog that had been tossed in a gunny sack and ordered, “Now make it work!”  Under new management, my home became tierra incognita, a daily battleground of new rules, new schedules, new boss, new crimes and new punishments.  

I survived that year thanks to two people:  Bruce Willardson and his good friend Stephen Lee.  I’ll save Stephen’s role for another time (hopefully not a funeral).  But there was Bruce:  steady, loyal, patient, kind, funny, poised, forever reeling me in from the storms.  That year I would invent any excuse imaginable to visit him at home:  whether it was teaching me how to play “Blackbird” on the guitar, updating me on the latest edition of MAD magazine, taking a dip in the pool on a hot summer day, or salvaging the Jimmy Hendrix portrait I had crudely drawn for art class.  Whatever my ruse, Bruce always obliged, and the Willardson home always delivered:  for me it was a place of peace, beauty, harmony, good humor, and witty conversation.  It became my refuge, my sanctuary, my home.  In retrospect, I was probably little more than a six foot three inch pseudo-hippy pest, but every time I walked through the door Bruce greeted me with a robust, “Hey, Big B!”  As if he truly meant it, and as if I truly belonged.   

The morning of my high school graduation, while the other seniors were rushing off to parties or to the beach or whatever other activities to kill their last official ditch day of school, I was stuffing my essential earthly belongings into an old pillow sack.  The night before, my step-mother and I had had our final shoot-out at the OK Corral.  I’d had enough; I was leaving home. 

In the fashion of the times, I was going to hitchhike north to the Bay area and beyond, but I needed a ride to the Pacific Coast Highway.  Naturally, I called Bruce and asked if he was terribly busy.  “Busy,” he said, “but not terribly.” 

So I squeezed into his VW bug and he drove me twenty miles to the coast and then all the way north to Zuma Beach before pulling off the highway. 

“I guess you’re not going to graduation tonight,” he said.

I smiled.  “I guess not.”

“Well, the bus stops here,” he said. 

I thanked him, and then he gave me The Brucer Look:  the sideways glance, the penetrating stare, the almost imperceptible grin that said everything without uttering a word.

I smiled back at him.  “Yes, I am,” I said.  “Certifiably crazy.”

He slipped me a five dollar bill, which at that moment doubled the total value of my financial portfolio. 

Up until that moment I hadn’t fully grasped the fact that I was saying good-bye to the best and most loyal friend of my childhood.  Only now do I realize he was my guardian angel as well. 

“Thanks, Brucer” I said.  “For everything.

I’m not a crier; I didn’t even weep at my mother’s funeral.  But as I watched Bruce’s little yellow VW bug shrink to a pinpoint on the highway, my eyes welled up as I lifted my hand and waved good-bye. Then I turned north to begin the longest journey of my life, while he drove south, his mission accomplished and many more waiting in the wings.   

Forty-five years later, I imagine Bruce driving down the coast highway looking up at the heavens with a shrug and a sigh, whispering, “Well, I did my best.”

He did far more than that, and I am one of many who is eternally grateful that I was placed on Bruce’s earthly docket.  I know that if I were Bruce, I would be petitioning the archangels for an easier assignment on the other side.  But that’s not The Brucer.  He always loved a challenge.