marbles

Life is a little like a bucket of marbles. Just try to shift them around because you’d like to make a little more space in the middle, or maybe you want all the cat eyes on the top. Good luck. If there’s a hole, it’ll soon be filled by tumbling entropy, and the marbles will mix themselves up any way they want to. 

In the midst of saddest events in life, there is absurdity. Don’t pretend it’s not there, in the interest of preserving the dignity of the moment. At least admit it to yourself. You don’t necessarily have to confess in writing like this: 

Jeff had died. I was alone with him. I’d said goodbye, into ears that may have heard, and he passed peacefully. A little while later, Helen, Gordon, Bill, and Allen had returned to the scene. At the bidding of the hospice nurse, the funeral home team arrived. A young lady and a young man, each on the stout side and about five feet tall, with at most an extra inch or two between them. Clad in black suits, they wore studied expressions of somber compassion, and spoke in gentle whispery tones.

They readied the gurney, then took their positions, one at the head, one at the foot. It was at this point, Allen told me later, that he and Bill looked at each other with the shared thought--should we be helping them? But the “funeral gnomes” (another thought, shared with me later,) carried out their offices unflappably while I was engaged in a phone call with the pastor, to start planning a service. There is no one who would have found the scenario more quirkily funny than Jeff. 

My old dog, Freddi, died four days after Jeff. Her care needs had intensified in her last year. I was plying her with tasty canned stews, concocted for doggies, and carrying her outside and in to meet the calls of nature. By some ways of reasoning, I should be experiencing a reprieve from dog duty. In fact, I am sitting here now, typing away, while Olivia’s chihuahua (snuggled against my right thigh) passes tiny gassy poots, and Allen’s cockapoo (snuggled against my left) snores. There isn’t much of a dog-shaped cavity in my bucket of marbles.