Cindy Coble is a mother. She likes swimming in Broad Brook year round. Her dog, Tunni, is her best friend. London P. Lippke, 71, of Guilford, died Feb. 7.
BRATTLEBORO-Naked and freezing, I had just dunked in Broad Brook one raw March morning. London, on the other bank, cupped his hands and yelled, “You’re fucking nuts!” followed by the most boisterous laugh I’d ever heard.
This was love.
He was 10 years older, fabulously handsome, whip smart.
I had just lost my idiot boyfriend in a skiing accident, and I was trying to cold plunge out my grief. The nightly gin binging was ruining my skin.
London’s pipe smoke drifted across the water, warm and safe.
Fast friends, he calmed my last nerves with stories of the ghosts of Broad Brook, tales of the natural world. He knew everything about the flora and the fauna, and we shared a reverence for the first spring flowers to arrive — coltsfoot, bloodroot wildflower. For the bobcat, the buck, and the great blue heron that would whoosh low through the bends of the brook looking for fish. Always a good omen.
We’d spend hours tossing my rottweiler sticks (logs, whole trees) into the water, and she loved him very much.
* * *
I’d been intrigued by the theatrical house on the brook for 20 years — the clock tower, the masterful gardens. It sits on a rocky ledge by a thrilling waterfall. Magic. Of course, this was London’s house, and how fortunate was I to be welcomed into it.
We were soon sharing dinners, rides, books, tequila, and day trips to Hildene. London would leave little notes on my car a few times a day, small gifts on my porch: a perfect cosmo in a little glass vase, a pint of blueberries. We’d sit on my porch all night, drinking and trying to help each other parse the sadness of being human.
When I broke both wrists, phalanges, and ulna and dislocated my shoulder, he came and cleaned and cooked. He picked me up from surgeries and drove my son to riding lessons. I hoped I might someday return the kindness.
We talked literature, poetry — he could recite hundreds of poems by heart. By his big heart.
We had a tree with a hollow, perfect for leaving small treasures. He’d leave a plastic Wonder Woman; I’d volley with a chunk of amethyst.
This went on until he died in February.
* * *
London was sensitive, bar none. It’s what made him brilliant, and it was also his Achille’s heel. He took care of others, but when he became ill he retreated into himself. Trying to help him was poking the bear.
His situation became dire last fall. The more I tried, the stronger he pushed me away. I was verklempt. My perfect, wunderkind daughter had been diagnosed with ALS, and the disease took a strong grip.
His magnanimous neighbors stepped in and did so much for him. His beautiful sisters came to sort his affairs. They are a balm; like London, generous and spirited.
The truth of this story is that I let him down; I couldn’t find a way in, and I fumbled.
London is now one of his ghosts of the brook, roaming the ledges and deer paths, swooshing low and fast with the heron.
I go and talk to him every day.
* * *
“If I had a single flower for every time I think of you, I could walk forever in my garden.”
—Claudia Adrienne Grandi
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