Dumb Supper
The call comes just as you always feared it would: a telephone shrieking in the dead of night. You were in a delta state of deep sleep. The impressions of your dreams haven’t quite dissolved. Your brain is foggy, your hands clumsy. An unwelcome adrenalin rush pumps your heart as you fumble to press the buttons that will answer the call. However they phrase it, in whatever tones it is stated from clinical detachment to empathetic caring, your blood runs cold upon hearing the words. Your loved one is no longer here, has begun the journey to the realm of the ancestors. So started Labor Day 2023 for me, when my mother died of natural causes at the age of 91 . From there, over the ensuing two years, eight people in my life have died. Some were friends from college and the early days in New York; some were friends from the move out west. One was a parent by marriage. Two were especially difficult: a brother who died violently by his own hand, and a very close friend whose deterioration was...
