A DEATH IN THE FAMILY -- YOURS, MINE AND OURS

(Note to my dedicated readers: As the New Year's arrival and this holiday season are a time for renewal and resolution, they also call up our best recollections. Please join me in my departure from the strictly humorous, as we well-remember our loved ones lost. Not to worry -- the light hasn’t changed with this week's offering, only the lantern.)

DON'T BEREAVE EVERYTHING YOU SEE

Comedian Stephen Wright has a quick stand-up aphorism he uses that best defines the time/space continuum of our lives, and how easily it can become warped and unfocused.

Seemingly deep in thought onstage, he’ll stare silently for a moment, addressing his audience but looking away, sounding like he’s lost in a seizure of soft reflection as he speaks to someone not there. In this stylistic signature, he’ll then solemnly announce: “Two years ago I was ... no ... wait ... that was yesterday.”

Perfect. Laughter erupts. He remains stone-faced and distant, and the laughter peaks and fades away. But, in that fading, the camaraderie in the poignant, familiar and dark side of his bon mot takes hold in all of us.

Yes, we’ve been there. We’ve all had a time like that, when we’ve been so self-absorbed or sidetracked by something in our lives that we’ve actively or passively acted wrongly at the wrong time and place, and just plain felt like we’ve had our skins replaced with synthetic overcoats and our innards shellacked.

No, I’m not talking about when we receive a 500-dollar car repair estimate when we were thinking a 5-dollar widget would do, though that’s a close second.

But, a death in the family?

Ah, now, we come to the granddaddy of external discombobulation, the grandmother of internal mayhem, the ultimate distractor, defier and validator of Who’s on first, What’s on second, and When we arrived at the game:

Someone has died in the family.

It is the time when five minutes is an eternity, and a lifetime has passed since this morning’s breakfast.

It is the space where home appliances now become hostile co-conspirators of remembrance, but a faded photograph beneath a refrigerator magnet affords you the serenity of an altar. It is where a dark, spidery retreat to a broken and castaway basement chair becomes a comfort zone, but a living room couch feels like the demonic epiphany of your lost love.

No need to draw cards. You’ll play the ones you have.

No need to place bets. The gamble has become a sure thing.

No point in even sitting down to play. The game no longer has meaning, except that which comes from irrelevance and disorder.

We’d be cheated, anyway, because the first and final mystery is laid bare at the same moment it becomes the most elusive. We cry over our awkward silence and laugh with the kindred voice. We stumble through the simplest tasks and expertly navigate along lost horizons.

We lose something we didn’t know was ours to lose, and find something we weren’t even looking for.

We see ... and we bereave.

When our mother dies suddenly, just getting dressed and finding the missing mate to a solitary shoe is a monumental task, but driving six hours in a blizzard to attend and comfort a surviving father isn’t even an inconvenience.

When a father leaves us, we’re befuddled over what to do with his suspenders, but we know without hesitation that we’ll never part with his careworn sweatshirt. It will be worn again, with care, and in fond tribute as we stand-in for him at the garage’s work bench.

When a brother departs, we can't remember what our last words to him were, but we can tell you the year, make and model of that gleaming, high school convertible we once shared, double-dating at the drive-in with the come-hither twins.

When we lose a sister, we look in our keepsakes box and find that we still have the cork from a bottle of wine long ago used to toast her first pregnancy, but realize we hadn’t visited each other in two years.

And, when the unthinkable happens and our children pass away before us, we are struck by how, for months afterwards, we can still smell them in our clothes, hear their voices at play, and feel them exhausted and nestled in our laps.

Yet, try as we might, we don’t remember ever seeing their hair fall across their face like that -- the way it is in the picture on the refrigerator.

Death in the family. It was years ago.

Or, was it yesterday, and come this morning it’s already tomorrow.

We can see it now, and as we enter the promise of 2007, we reaffirm our love and remember well.

Copyright 2006 B. Elwin Sherman. All rights reserved.