In yesterday’s post I lamented the fact that many of the young folk (20 – 40) simply didn’t (or couldn’t) see me. I am the invisible man as far as they’re concerned, because I’m a Baby Boomer (1948), and they’re–what? Gen X, Y, Millennials? Who can keep track? We name generations as frivolously as we name hurricanes.
But maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be: Three years ago, my eighty-eight-year-old mother passed away. Last year it was the father of one of my oldest and dearest friends. This morning, I received word that my best friend’s mother died just after midnight.
Maybe that’s the way things are supposed to be: We live, we die. Our rotting bodies make room for, and fertilize, the next batch o’ peeps. Maybe ol’ Dr. Malthaus was right.
I didn’t know Norma Roshay. In 30 years I may never have even met her. But then, I didn’t meet her son, Jack, until I was near 30. It’s easy to get to know your friends’ parents when you’re young and they always have a Coke or a Devil Dog handy. But then, Jack grew up in Pennsylvania, so it might not have made a difference. Norma raised a good kid, though: When my Mom died in November, 2006, Jack flew from his home in California to mine in Reno to help me get things straight. And last year, when my financial universe was devolving faster than Reagan’s earthly grip, he offered to buy one of my Martin guitars (the one that was previously owned by Carl Wilson of the Beach Boys) for ‘way more than what it was worth. For 30 years Jack has been a rock—especially these last few. That tells me that he must have been raised right.
When my mom died, the folks at the hospice gave me a copy of this poem, attributed to Henry Van Dyke:
I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.
hen someone at my side says: “There, she is gone!”
“Gone where?”
Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she is was when she left my side and she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.
Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when someone at my side says, “There, she is gone!” there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout: “Here she comes!”
Okay, so it’s kind of maudlin and just a bit predictable. And it’s about all the hospice folks saw fit to comfort me.
So, here a silent thought to those friends and relatives of mine who have died during the passed five years; and a silent thought, also, to my friends:
- To: Luisa Marie Carollo Scimé DeMont – my mother.
- To: Lewis Lazard Fisher – Fran’s father.
- To: Norma Roshay – Jack’s mother.
- To: Milton I Schwartz – a friend
- To: the mother and father of Jamie McKee, who both died this past year. Jamie and I dated on and off for three years and I never met them.
and finally, to Ira H. Peak, the most influential college professor it’s ever been my privilege to know. He’s suffering from the worst form of death: His brilliant mind is turning to sludge under the ravages of dementia, and, Ashli, his wife tells me, it’s only a matter of time.
So I think tonight I’ll play my guitar, play along with my favorite groups from the 60s and 70s. And maybe it will drive the thoughts of death away.
We may talk of websites next.
