Hi.
It’s been a bit of time, but I’m back.
Two of the men I held as father-ish people died in the past few weeks and my heart is trying to figure out how to integrate that part of the story.
But a baby was born, too, and today I’m marinating in the memories from the extravagantly beautiful wedding Coco and I were at in Italy this week last year.
Yes, it was someones famous, and we were the least-important, least famous humans there, but we had so much fun being in Italy with all those magnificent people for a week, and I had the absurd honor of being an officiant, and, really, our heads are still swirling with all that glee.
Of course this is life, weddings, deaths, births, and I guess sometimes it speeds up. I’ve noticed that a few of the folks close to the men who died have been talking about what it all looks like in the rear view mirror, which is to say … clearer.
There is that perfect language by Proust:
“I think that life would suddenly seem wonderful to us if we were threatened to die as you say. Just think of how many projects, travels, love affairs, studies, it–our life–hides from us, made invisible by our laziness which, certain of a future, delays them incessantly.”
Further on he speaks about how we shouldn’t need the threat of a catastrophic event to be in love with life, that we should keep remembering that we’re just mortals and we might be dead before bedtime.
I wonder why. Why we need so much jolting, so much loss to live life with reverence and awe.
Yesterday I went to visit the wife of one of the father-ish men I love who just died and while we were standing in the living room together, looking at his obituary, a hurricane lantern on the mantle exploded and two clocks that hadn’t been wound in years started bonging. It was really jarring at first, so loud and unexpected. I’m used to getting signs from the spirit realm, but they usually come as quiet animals, birds or songs. Gentle stuff. This was new and unusual and also very wild and cool. I loved it.
I want reminders like that all the time, that life and death are one, that we gain incredible powers when we die; death does not diminish us one bit. We drop the body suit, but who the heck wants that sagging, heavy, achy thing longer than is necessary anyway? Death is freedom.
I think it’s not only laziness of action that keeps us from living fully, but laziness of imagination, too. Laziness of wonder and curiosity.
I will take care of this, this feeling with you. I know how rare it is to feel this kind of bonkers beautiful magic Lena said to Marc last year in Italy in front of a cast of colorful, inspiring people.
I want to keep applying it to life. And I want you to do that, too. Keep taking care of this wildly opportune and mystical thing we call life so that we are ready when it’s death’s turn. We’re ready because we have lived the whole thing through. And cherished it well.
We closed Brereton Jones’ memorial service in Kentucky last week with an entire gospel choir singing Shout! by the Isley Brothers.
Say you will. Don’t forget to say you will.
cheers and happy allthethings,
xomo
Live every moment. Love you and Happy fall.
Damn I miss you.