Shouldn't…but Do

Nestled neatly in columns, a cinematographer is just down page from a designer whose space is not far from a bon vivant. A thoughtful partner and fine businessman reside just above on the right- each much loved by the families to which they were once attached.

On the Obit page of The New York Times, some life stories jump off the page, while the words in others achingly illustrate both soul and sense of loss.  The use of time on Earth summarized one last time.

A page of compressed text, dedicated to life in order to announce death. Life, electricity running through tissue, and inevitable death, the decline and failure of that tissue to carry on any longer.

Pictures from youth or distinguished professional photographs remind us, give us the cloak, of the preferred persona of the deceased.  Gazing in black and white from thin newspaper, these civilized mugshots can only hint.

Obits are stories that usually begin with the end, and then spill a tale of time, love, interests, and achievement, before closing with a list of those left behind.  Unique twists, turns, and choices clarify  individuality, even as it is lost. Death returns us to night air, unrestrained sunlit joy, and the projective ephemera of human memory.

The most mortal of publication pages, the small print is full of life, mystery, suffering, and not a little eternity.  On any day, lives exceptional for being ordinary, or extraordinary, pass into smoke, drifting through the portal we call the obituaries. All of life held in an endless cycle of names, dates, and details, in memoriam.

The original call of “Halloween” was to abide rules of civility to honor deceased kin with a bit of food, a favorite chair, a light left on. Only a threading heartbeat separates the living from the dead, a thought from a flatline, stories that takes decades to write, and just moments to read.