Disbelieving Dark

 

Messenger (c) October 30, 2012

“Just because you don’t believe in something doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”

A  strangely compelling Boardwalk Empire character–a World War I  sharpshooter who carried his talents back to a morally complex civilian life during Prohibition–dispensed this worthwhile advice at an Easter gathering.

A fellow blogger whom I count as a cyber-friend writes movingly of her own life, love, and loss of a beloved mother.  She wrote this morning that, surveying the bright colors of visible reminders of el dios de la muerte, she wishes she were “one of the haunted.”

She does not receive from her the mother the signals she hoped to receive–those elusive thin spaces in which she still can feel her presence.

I do not consider myself a believer in the afterlife in a traditional sense.  But I am unquestionably  haunted. I recently fled one haunted home, but remain surrounded by what I choose to believe are signals from Jim.

After my husband Jim spoke of his diagnosis with pancreatic cancer, one of our friends looked at him–a young, outwardly robust, healthy man who betrayed no sign of illness, let alone such a devastating one–and said, with a hint of the abject disbelief we all felt, “The good kind or the bad kind?”

My ever-unflappable and good-natured husband replied, with his trademark wry grin, “I’m not sure there is a good kind of pancreatic cancer.” Continue reading “Disbelieving Dark”

My Favorite Graffiti

In Musical Memory

As Stephen Colbert might ask, with one eyebrow earnestly raised, “Great graffiti. . . or greatest graffiti ever?”

Marching band season began with a meeting and rehearsal last night.  This will be my 10th season as a band mom.  Jim was both the unofficial band doctor and an official band photographer.  He tremendously enjoyed both roles, and left me with an archive of thousands of photographs from marching band and concert band seasons.

Invariably, Memorial Day would be unbearably humid–worst at parade time, as the marchers gathered in clusters and practiced in a steaming parking lot.  Band members’ discomfort would be heightened–if not made intolerable–by their long-sleeved black uniforms.  Jim would walk along briskly, both his doctor’s bag and his camera bag slung over his right shoulder.

At parades, from careful past observation he knew when he had to stand guard at a particular corner.  For example, he deduced the precise spot where, rounding a sharp corner, one flutist reliably would fade to white, crumple, and need to be taken out of the lineup for hydration.   Continue reading “My Favorite Graffiti”