Good Days for Dying. . .

These howling Januaries haunt me—they provide such good days for dying. Am still grieving the demise of my dear friend, Dorth, early last January. Likely till the end of my days. Dad died when I was ten, and being the eldest, Mom & I slipped into an inadvertent partnership mimicing marriage. She needed somebody energetic and outrageous and I either was or became . . . who knows? Dorth nurtured and mentored me, but uniquely flexible, she was a grand friend-companion and I miss movies with her.

Late winter last year I lost another long-time friend Tom Carr, who, as his eloquent Celtic kinsman Mr. Dylan Thomas, advised Did not Go Gentle into that Good Night. Like Chagall's Lovers above the town, Tom's spirit floats above my garden, which he kept up in my Korean and German absences, and I fancy I see it when I look out the south windows.

One of the drawbacks of village existence is being closer to death than our big city counterparts. I have lived in Chicago, L.A., Denver, Dublin, Paris, Berlin, and Changwon, South Korea and don't believe I ever attended a wake or a funeral in any of them. You don't even know a big city librarian dies, but when the village librarian dies, you do and we buried her this a.m.

This evening is even more painful. We went to basketball games with Peggy, riding around with boys, cutting the gut, laughed, sat in class with her sister, and complained to her about the inadequacy of the onion crop this fall. And now she is gone.

But standing back, casting a Critical Eye on the world, maybe it isn't really a drawback being closer to the ground, knowing the cold. Maybe we are the lucky ones, far more conversant with reality.