Life is a
BUNGEE jump! It goes up and propels you, which is what you want, but then it
scares you once you are sent back down! YEAH.
There are all
sorts of meditation practices (my husband & I do one daily for half an
hour), but they cannot dispose, it seems, of the really heavy blows. This past
Friday, early afternoon, I googled obituaries looking for a very close friend
of 52 years.
I knew he
had passed away in all of my conscious mind, but my heart had to see it
verified. It occurred suddenly January 6th, a very short time after
he informed me by email, not our usual vehicle of communication, about the discovery
of cancer growth in one lung and a kidney.
We had been
very regular correspondents of real mailed letters for all of the years my
husband & I have been out of America for over twenty years. We last saw him
while visiting New York in the year 2003.We had the warm privilege of staying
with him and his wife Ellen on more than one occasion on visits to NYC. Losing
a true friend is much like losing a part of your own life, a part that I, at
least, will continue to attempt to recapture for the rest of my life. There
remains a persistent refusal to accept the final absence as though a battery in
a bedside alarm clock has failed you, suddenly, after counting on it for so
long.
Danny’s
death was sudden, although would not have been had his disease had some time to
progress---radiation and the like, as he had written he expected to experience.
He will always
be “Danny” to me, although Dan had been adopted a very many years ago. Danny
Icolari: there has been only one and no other.
I would like
to invite you to summon the memory of the last two or three friends whom you have
lost. Close your eyes, remember a particular expression (without photographs)
of their faces and particular expression: a smile, perhaps, or a laugh.
Death is perhaps
simpler than life; you land with a bounce and sink into a dark unknown cavern,
never to be seen again.
Religion has
tried with desperate energy and enforcement to soften the blow by creating all
sorts of new horizons above (and below!): promises of reunions, re-creation of
new lives to be lived here as well as beyond.
New Proclamation!
There is life, and there is death. There is today and tomorrow, and then
oblivion ( a great little book by Josephine Hart, OBLIVION) No need to falsify
and prolong in fantasy.
Life is
usually long enough to do and eat great things, to explore, implore, love
wildly, make fumbling awkward decisions to set back progress, shop, travel,
patronize favorite haunts(cafes have done it for me), and most importantly to
make wonderful, intelligent, loving, humorous friends.
Danny
Icolari was one of these. Gracias Danny!
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