The Consolations of Fall

      Summer's almost gone, winter's coming on, and it feels like fall. A time of nostalgia for the people who are gone—Mom, Dad, Funky Uncle Francis, Outrageous Aunt Delores, and Patrician Uncle Walter. Or are so far away I too seldom see them—Frau Welters in Berlin, my friends in Paris.

     Fall arrived early this year with the death of someone I didn't know well and could by no stretch of the imagination be considered close to. Au contraire, there was a touch of immortality about him, a twinge invincibility that is also gone. I suspect, precisely the lesson of fall: remind us of our immortality. So we are left to find our minor consolations—a good onion crop and a funny runty kitten.