The Day Of The Dead

As I opened Google this morning I was encouraged to "Discover The Day Of The Dead With Google." But. no thanks, I was thoroughly rehearsed in its possibilities from early childhood remembering all too well--and at this autumnal season, the dead leaves swirling around and mounding (all so appropriately), Daddy lying in his coffin at the foot of the stairs in the great front hall, his mourning friends and colleagues trooping in to, as they said, "pay their respects."  Mother sat and received them, banked with her six children, now so bereft, indeed, an occasion for another freshet of tears from those who beheld this mournful scene.  This was eighty years ago, an experience refreshed upon the occasion of her own death, a decade or so later, followed a year later by the solemn church procession as I proceeded my parents-in-law in the pitiful little procession in Ames Iowa following the gentleman holding the urn which contained the ashes of my young wife.  I could add the memory of the death of my best friend, Ted, who died at 43, overweight, too often drunk, but in my memory the most delightful and loving comrade, who taught me how to deal with the pomposities of academia with impudence and deceit, a friendship so much needed and gone so soon, and that thought prompts me to think of Phil, a young man at the university in New York who was one of the few strong deeply caring friends who gave me tenderness and commitment all the while keeping himself on the other heterosexual side of bromance.  Dead at forty somethng or other, oh, my so young, and I went on, and on, through the deaths of young men, often former casual lovers, gone with AIDS, until we arrived at the siblings Pinky galloping cancer as she called it who refused chemo, "ready to go," at 73, Holly, with internal bleeding, at 88, "I don't want to go back to the hospital, I'm ready," Cyrus, still mourning his dead wife beclouded with Alzheimer's whose tender care replaced the years of being doctor, who left this world when he fell down a flight of cellar stairs at 90.  Sisters Jane 92 and Barbara 89 are so aggressively alive that we will set them to the side, and there I am, tottering along with my stick, gym mornings three times a week, everywhere I turn the flimsy and oh, so cheesy bits of wispy ghosts purchased at Walmarts.  Mother established a home that had the aura of the train station where we seemed always to be waving goodbye to some departing train or other.  There have been many arrivals, her six children, then grandchildren, ten at least, maybe twelve, and the proliferation beyond that I cannot even count, save for my two great grandchildren, oh, how did I get on to this subject? No blog yesterday.  Could not sleep all night peacefully as I lay in terror of oversleeping and interrupting the arrival of the cleaning lady at 8:30 brisk, beautiful, a rebuke to sloppiness and laggard movements.  Well, now, two weeks free of that worry.