In the dream the earth seems to awaken, then uncover
A form, a buried memory, half-forgotten theatrics
And endless pages of notes and lines of memory
Between the recent deaths of my sister Pat at age ninety-five and of my best friend Bill, four days short of his ninety-third birthday, I attended a Zoom seminar on the psychology of aging and death. Perhaps contrary to what the poet Dylan Thomas…
My father, dead for more than half a century, shows up on occasion in my dreams, visions and revelries. On his recent pre-Christmas calling my father was looking down at me through an open skylight, flanked on his right side by a grey squirrel. In this dream my father seemed to possess his…
I read recently that Mick Jagger will be 93 when his new child is old enough to drive. The context for this observation was time and mortality. There are absolute markers in life. For example, if I make it to 80, I have a good shot at making it to 86 or so…
The Family Discusses Death
I was caught in a holiday traffic scrum while driving in the Hudson Valley, north of New York City. While at a red light I noticed a van to my left bearing the following advertisement: “Caskets Made with Love for your Departed Loved Ones.” From the markings this…
In the middle of the night I often wake up thinking of “last words” as the stuff of fiction and fate. Death is always a thigh-slapper, even at two in the morning. I am thinking about being at sea, reflecting on my years in the Navy and returning to the sea one last time after my death. The idea came neither…
A friend and I were having lunch across from Grand Central Station in NYC. We have known each other for thirty years and this was something like a homecoming.
We hadn’t seen each other for over a year, so we first do the male thing — size each other up. He…
I woke up in the middle of the night last night (this morning, really), some part of my being attuned to the emptiness in our eighteen year-old son’s room next door. Turning on the light I read for a couple hours, reading Saffron Dreams, about a Muslim widow of 9/11, her husband in…
who’s in a hurry, i ask them, but they don’t even know