now what

Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree
how brittle are thy branches
the time has passed, so quick - ly
and now the tree's a hazard
the needles dropping freqently
the lights cause me anxiety
oh Christmas tree, how can this be
a chore so uninviting...

Granny

Granny was around for 93 years. And now she’s not. “Wait” I protest. “She’s always been there. Where did she go?” On a surface level I do understand that when people who live to be 93 die peacefully in their sleep there is no tragedy. On the other hand, when the young pass away – with their whole lives ahead of them – it makes no sense; it doesn’t fit. What I realized this week is that I have the opposite reaction at my core: those who live long lives belong on earth, while those who stay only briefly probably just left the coffee pot on in their astral abode. My intellect and my soul are desperate for an explanation and they each come up with opposite theories. All this, the rampant analysis followed by the conclusion of negative capability, is happening as hands are shaken and others are hugged; others who are urging one another to see this in a positive light, no matter what it is. As we listen to pastors or priests or reverends, memorials, testimonials, eulogies, psalms, poems and odes. I sit and sneer at those who are blubbering and those who are stone faced; I can’t even figure out who to judge. Upon reflection, I am left utterly confounded. So I cry and then the note Granny wrote before her death is read: “No funereal gloom”. She was always pushing stoicism as a way of life, and still is evidently. I remember that my fits of emotional turbulence always threw her for a loop. She would look at me like she looked at our ice maker when it went berserk. Though, to be fair, she did not yell “Stop it! Stop it!” at me. She did say, “Come on now, splash some water on your face and do something to get your mind off it.” Now that I am no longer in my early 20’s, I understand what she was getting at. I also understand that a woman who lived through two world wars would not necessarily consider weight gain a disaster. The Hindenburg, now that’s a disaster. At the time though, she might as well have been speaking Lithuanian. And what I’m saying is that anyone who has lived long enough to learn the emotional equivalent of an eastern European language, should just stay. Of course, this opinion does not take into account the fact that by her last few years on earth, Granny had forgotten most of what she knew… but that is fodder for future rumination.