Today I received some partial news in and off-hand way regarding a funeral. It was not someone within my circle of family and friends directly, but rather, A circle that intersects mine. Third hand if you will.
People pass away every day of course from the expected to the shocking and everything in between. We become inured to it, as we must take turns grieving our own personal losses, else life would be a perpetual mourn without the joy of new life, new beginnings and the heights of closeness that exposes us to the depths of sadness that loss begets.
I leave out details not because of privacy or relevancy or for reasons of discretion it is because I truly have no idea exactly who, or the circumstances. Just a single sentance delivered in passing out of necessity to explain sudden travel plans. Not given to solicit sympathy. The lack of detail was not a slight or intended to exclude. It just was brief bit of trivia about the certainly not trivial.
The person who mentioned leaving to attend the funeral had been for years one of my closest of friends, relatives and confidents.
There has been a falling out to say the least between us. Such things are possible between any two people of course, but despite at times rocky shoals -clumsily navigated- scraped, bruised and caused our relationship to strain, list and take on water. To founder completely seemed a distant possibility, but an unlikely one. The ship always righted itself, the sun came out for brilliant glimpses of splendor. Calm seas to white-caps presented moments of joy like the sting of ice salt spray braces. Life, alive, bitter with the sweet.
Worse than angered arguments, things said meant and not that wound, is the holes in conversation that once would have been natural. To reach out and comfort seems not my place and the whole point of life all at the same time. Their joy was shared joy, their losses my own for so long that to be a cold bystander seems soberingly surreal.
All such losses that glance through our lives are a reminder of our mortality. This lends perspective at times in a meaningful way. For this loss great to them to be a shallow echo in my life seems an alternate reality. Makes one think of other paths not traveled, not chosen. The what if's.
In science fiction there is always an alternate time line where the captain was not phased or the ship avoided a dangerous port of call. That is fiction, this is life. It is reality as we know it now, and it makes me sad.
This is not my period of mourning, but when those I care about so deeply mourn, this all seems pretty trivial, and garish. The vulgar is not of necessity always obscene, but in this case, at this time it would be. Hence the break.
I have enjoyed the writing itself for its creative uplift as much as the being enthralled with the sexual opiates of the events I write about. Even amidst the hackneyed phrasing of borrowed phrases and premises, a ray of me comes through that makes me smile. In oddd ways despite the clearly dangerous waters I tread, it has brought me a feeling, false to be sure of alternate possibilities, and made me treasure somethings about my spouse even as I cast pearls as they say.
This ramble makes no sense I realize without context which would be more jarring than finding out Kirk lives in an alternate universe. It is meant only for me as I clarify my own reality, mortality, and morality.
