Signs

One of my favorite times is early morning on Sundays. The paper has come but I haven't gone out to get it. I've got one cup of coffee down and a good refill by my side. The house is quiet. Tye and Caitlin are curled up in her warm bed, Walker is sprawled across his top bunk, and Robyn, fighting off a sinus infection, is curled under layers of bedding, staving off morning a little longer. The house is quiet, and for a little while it's mine.

On Friday, I rode with my friend Chris up to our friend Doug's father's funeral. Whitey was 81, I believe, and lived a long and useful life. Our families spent some time together, years ago, picnicking on the banks of a lake together. Our kids were small and Doug and LeaAnn didn't have kids yet. We really enjoyed ourselves and I decided I liked Whitey and Ardy just fine. Whitey had a stroke a while ago and life hadn't been the same for him. Doug said he was ready to go, tired of illness and limitation. Fair enough, Whitey. That's not why I went to his funeral.

Whitey sang in a gospel quartet. The highlights of his funeral were Doug's loving, humorous eulogy of his father, and recordings of Whitey singing the old gospel standards, a la Eddy Arnold. He had a warm voice and a laid back delivery that belied obvious passion for the music and a sincere belief in the words that his generation could always pull off better than mine can. Whitey, in his own way, was a ham (takes one to know one). He loved to get up there and sing. Singing at his own funeral was right and just and a great way to go out.

I sat in my pew, surrounded by my good friends, and watched Whitey's good friends, a gospel trio now, with some help, stand up for him again as pall bearers. They were gray, suited, solemn, and most of all, present. I turned to my friend Geof and said "that's us in a few more years." Limping a little, creaking here and there, still getting up, doing what we can. . . .

I'm in the process of making arrangement for Mom. She's under Hospice care now, and although their "six months to live" guidelines are not prophetic, she's in the final part of her journey, however long that takes. I have never looked at her last will and testament or her final version of her living will and power of attorney, so I got them out of the safety deposit box and read them through to make sure I was on track. I have started working through the paperwork to establish myself with the company the provides her annuity to see what happens next. I am planning to call the Old Welsh Cemetary at Williamsburg to see if there's really a plot for her there as my Aunt Joan said, or if this is another of her (sometimes) happy fictions. In the event of another fiction, there is money for a plot, near, if not next to Aunt Joan, as Mom requested. I will call to order a lovely hand made Benedictine casket of lovely wood as a hedge against the metal Buick casket industry. I suppose a vault is unavoidable. Mom's memorial service will need to be in Wichita, where the her life, the part of it she really loved, happened. In these arrangements I am finding a surprising sense of peace. Perhaps it isn't her death I fear, but the horror of her decline, molecule by molecule, neuron by tangled neuron.

As I look up from the struggle, I realize that in so many ways her death has already come. When she speaks to me now, still recognizing my face, it is as though she is far away. Because her moments are not connected and her concentration is brief, she is again like a radio signal on a lonely highway, drifting in and out, music I love, perhaps coming through the static a few more times, worth waiting for. So, I show up.

Soon Robyn will come and brew tea, Tye will come for his morning rub, and, much later, the children will creep down the stairs blinking at a morning almost passed. We will resume the rhythm of our day. I hope Caitlin and Walker end up with friends like mine, like Whitey's, witnesses to their alliances, divorces, births, injuries, celebrations and farewells. I hope they come to visit us in our dotage and don't dread the experience as my parents did when they went home, or as I did . . . . I wonder how to keep that from happening.

I am collecting pictures of signs (hence the first picture). Along the road, people have chosen to say so many things, to mark spots for commerce, safety, history, God. My goal is to collect them as I see them, keeping the camera in the car. I will share some of them with you as I go.

There are signs everywhere we go, reminding us who we are and where we are on our journey. We acquire age, if not wisdom. We witness for each other, if not for our own selves (a more difficult task). I still find this journey worthwhile, unlike my poor friend Cam, who went out in a blaze of blindness and spite unworthy of him. I warn myself not to be too quick to judge this, frequently tangled as I am in my own hubris. I am looking forward to this day, and to the next. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. . . .