the platitudes of willful resemblance

the second and third – 2&3 – 23, isn’t there something significant about that?

my father-in-law is dying and I am losing a good friend, a man I deeply admired.
I’ve switched to autopilot and my wife has had to be the stronger of us.
I don’t grieve well and I do so silently, she headlongs into projects and gets everything done. my wife, my constant hero and I do what I can for her.
Eventually the words will come and for now I cannot convey the depth of my sadness. his wife, his daughter are in mourning’s bondage and we are all walking with him to the end of his many years of struggle.
We go to hospice tomorrow – it is an unfortunate 2 hours away in a veterans home – he has lived there for the past 6.5 years.

It has taken me a long time to write this much. it is hard to lose such a good man.

I grieve

I grieve slowly,
quietly.

occupying the hours of
a day with meditations

of death and the dead.
often I consider my own death

and am not unnerved by it as
death is one end only.

it is ever the patient student
of the dead that practices life

so fully
as to die with ease.

 – Hoc Scripsi

Louise Bourgeois dies and the art world loses another hero.

The loss is entirely ours as she lived 98+ years and beheld the admiration of her peers for three decades. A good life.
thus far those who have died in this recent display of death’s power lived good lives, long lives (except Coleman who had health issues from a young age). A few did so many drugs and drank to an excess that it was a miracle they lived as long as they did, I’m sure they would agree. But now I am waiting for the other proverbial shoe (apologies for the cliche) to be let go.