#9 TATWTD "Death and Life"
TATWTD #9
February 8, 2019
I would love to be writing a Ha, Ha, Ha bit of blather. I have reason to. Recently, along with seven others, my husband and I were dinner guests of an eatery eager to impress.
Let me begin by saying, the table water glasses had been filled. Our presence had been anticipated. This proved significant, good even, for the survival of any who wait, and wait, to be given attention; or for starters, given menus.
By the time thirty minutes or so had passed (but who counts while waiting for food?), with pleasant conversation but little official attention paid, by the time a server carrying cleared plates of diners done eating dropped a table knife on our host as he passed our table, by the time we received and genuinely enjoyed entrées, said “No thanks” to desserts because we had been at table for an hour and twenty minutes, by the time, finally, checks arrived but chocolate mints that usually accompanied the bills hadn’t, only then did one of the guests, head down, scribbling a signature, seriously asked, “Does it ever occur to you that we live at sea level but we go down to California?”
We at table cracked up. We laughed and laughed. We laughed at going “down” to California. We laughed at having no menus, having no apparent server, having soup served to one who ordered salad, having no salads delivered to two who had ordered them, having the particular request, “bacon please,” for one of the missing salads heard and acknowledged but not fulfilled (eye roll), having a fork catapulted across one plate to another, hearing one fellow diner ask, “Is this really a sweet potato?” Having been made late for a movie—but, hey, how often does it get to be so much fun fussing over things of insignificance?
I would love to be writing more Ha, Ha, Ha Bit of Blather but I have to stop and say this isn’t the day for that. This is a beautiful wintery day here in western Washington. We are covered in snow. Birds seek feeders, dogs seek spots to safely squat or lift a leg where they aren’t buried in snow to their chins, children pass by carrying sledding equipment, and a resident otter leaves tracks on the ice frosted pond. I love it all.
But, this is the day of a friend’s death. This is a week plus a bit after I officiated the burial of a loved friend whose wife holds my heart, an accidental death that occurred only a few weeks after a December death that mattered to me. And how can I not be reminded on the 7th day of every month, of the tragic loss of our beloved French son, the man of music, Marco, whose life ended in September 7th..
Not my own dying, but these I mention, help me understand why, for a season at least, I write under the rubric, “Thoughts Along the Way to Dying.” These dyings have quieted my soul and left my keyboard untouched since the last blog entry on January 21—which, really, if one wished to maintain reader’s interest in a blog, is not wise. But, strong in my mind of late has been the effect, the affect, of death.
Oh, plenty else has happened—like the recent Ha, Ha, Ha dinner experience, like today’s falling snow, like my preparing to defend the word “liberal” in an open forum, like a few good movies—ROMA or Bohemian Rhapsody, like the wedding announcements joyfully mailed for our son’s impending marriage. These things are worthy of thought along the way to dying. Not my own death yet, but by the awareness of death itself, and how its recurrence reminds us that we are born for it, that it will leave in place a person’s history, that it will create memories in survivors minds, that it does, and means to, cause grief, but how life reminds us that death cannot, does not, take everything.
Life challenges death’s grip. The snow, the otter’s tracks, the ha, ha, ha of a messed up dinner, the voice of a friend, faith, the beauty of every sort to be sighted, the tasks we choose to tackle, the tastes we choose to enjoy, the company we choose to keep, memories, today’s decision to write.
