MISSING OUR STAR

Internally, inwardly, I am bouncing all over the place, if that can be done with a heaping dose of lugubrious sorrow and existential questions.

The passings I have mentioned, some of them have come to fruition (am I mixing my metaphors there? I kind of like death having fruit …).

Ger got on the Mystery Train yesterday. His children and their spouses, grandchildren and their partners celebrated in appropriate Irish/Italian fashion (Ger was a member of the 101^stMountain Divisionin WW2 and always had Italy in his heart) with laughing, crying, and Negronis. M and I exchanged some texts. I asked him how he was doing today.

"Oh, you know, sad, occasional outbursts of crying, occasional slight feelings of exhilaration. Worried about Mom. Minor regrets, like why didn't I bring some of our favorite music up there 5 years ago? He had pretty much stopped listening. But as I thought about it say a year ago, I thought maybe it's just habit. Stupid television habit. It was always on, and loud. So I had no space to think or breathe up there. Upon arriving I always wanted to turn around and leave. I should have been more assertive with turning the stupid thing off. Or at least muting it and playing some good music. Oh well. Maybe next time. I am very glad that we had that listening on Sunday. That will stay with me forever."

I sure get that. Getting Janet to resist the gravitational pull of the rocking chair and the boob tube is a daily struggle. 

Ger had been a serious jazzbo, his favorite being, I believe, Woody Herman and His Thundering Herd. On Sunday, M found a version of their favorite, Lionel Hampton at Newport 1961 doing Flying Home. How remarkably apt.

Another friend's "aunt" died, Betty Ballantine. Another undersung female hero of the publishing world. All of you in my direct cohort benefited from her life and work. Here is her LA Times obit. The New York Times has yet to publish one.

And then on FB, and I would have never found out otherwise, the announcement that my friend Mary had died after years of fighting brain cancer. 

Mary and I were both returning students, so a bit older than most at UC. I don't recall why she had to take Portuguese, but suffice it to say that we both sucked mightily at the language. Most of the other students spoke Spanish and they were far ahead of us ... I mean far ... So we banded together to study, as we would not embarrass one another. I think we met every morning at the Student Union for coffee, Portuguese torture, and general gossip. 

Mary and I became dear friends. She lived in an amazing group home in one of those giant Berkeley houses off of Ashby and College, not too far from the Claremont Hotel and the seriously swanky parts of the Oakland/Berkeley Hills. I lived further down the hill, right on the Oakland/Berkeley border. The group house had dinners and other events to which I was invited often enough to be a satellite of that gang. 

We rather staid in and out of one another's lives until she moved to Portland and I was in Los Angeles. Her wedding to Randy, outdoors in a beautiful park near a river was one of the best ones I have ever attended. Besides all the dancing we did, a highlight was her sisters dancing an Irish jig to African music. (Mary came from a large, Irish San Francisco family. And yes, her father was a cop.)

Mary had a personality that was different than anyone else in my life. (Well, except for maybe my other Irish friends, the Maguires.) She was wry and mischevious in an inclusive way, waiting and inviting you to be "in on it." There was an aura of pleasure, of being pleased, of being a little bit goofy while being hella-smart. And ever-ready to be amused or to poke fun at, although I can't remember a single instance of mean-spiritedness.

Mary was a bright light, and although I hadn't seen her in decades, I never stopped enjoying and loving her, even if from a distance.

A RITUAL TO READ TO ONE ANOTHER

If you don't know the kind of person I am

and I don't know the kind of person you are

a pattern that others made may prevail in the world

and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,

a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break

sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood

storming out to play through the broken dike.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,

but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,

I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty

to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,

a remote important region in all who talk:

though we could fool each other, we should consider—

lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,

or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;

the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —

should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

— William Stafford