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Wraith
My wife drew my attention last night to the signs in front of a house near our place. The local funeral homes place these little signs, reading “Slow — Funeral” on either side of homes where someone has died, presumably to encourage an atmosphere of quiet and to discourage solicitors and other annoyances. This morning when I drove past the house, I looked to see if there was a funeral wreath on the door, and there it was, black and somber and silent. The house usually has a rather festive air to it. The owners keep candles and lights in the windows, they decorate lavishly for Christmas, and they keep…
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Once Was Open
At the foot of our mountain sits an abandoned auto repair garage. I pass it twice daily on my commute. Gary owned and ran the place. He was a lean, friendly fellow with an open face and direct manner. Shortly after we bought our place years ago, I had need of a mechanic and decided to give Gary’s place a try. It was a good decision. He was honest right down to the ground, a master mechanic, and remarkably fair. He once kept my old pickup truck an entire day, ran it up and down the mountain roads, crawled all over and under it, in an attempt to locate the…
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Cold Spring Water
I received word of the death of a friend. He was a genuine old-timey mountain man, and a moonshiner deluxe. Like the legendary Popcorn Sutton (pictured above), my friend moved easily among the hills and hollers of this region, fashioning well-crafted stills and firing them with wood he cut himself, filling them with clear, cold spring water that trickled through the cuts and valleys beneath stands of oak and rhododendron. Unlike Mr. Sutton, my friend owned and ran a respectable business and his moonshining was strictly a side venture. He was a master at distilling corn down into the potent clear liquid that so many have savored. Who can number…
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The Twelfth Of Ever
We slept in our recliners again last night, and it was a good sleep, as soundless and swaying as if we had been in the depths of the salty sea. Good until 1:30 AM, that is. That was the hour Jinx decided to say hello to his cousins, the coyotes, who were up on the far ridge singing their aria to the open face of the moon. He was right under the windows behind us, and he chuffed one short bark, then lifted his voice in a baritone howl that lasted a good quarter of a minute. I sat up and felt the atavistic hair on the back of my…
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Waiting For The Ram
I didn’t know Terry well, but what I did know of him I liked. He was gentle, good-humored, a careful listener, and had large, expressive eyes that watched the world without cynicism. I also knew that he was troubled, with a history of admissions to psychiatric wards and rehab facilities. I used to watch him and wonder how one so young could be so weary. Terry always seemed to be fighting to suppress a wince, as if his interior bruises were being palpated by an unseen and uncaring hand. And so while I was dismayed, I was not very surprised when I learned of his death by suicide. The day…
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Goodbye, Neil
With age comes loss, and it’s interesting to observe one’s own reactions to loss. Even loss involving people not personally known can surprise a man with its punch and bruise. When I heard the other day of the death of Neil Peart, the drummer for the Canadian rock group Rush, I was struck dumb with grief. Very curious. I never knew the man except through his lyrics and masterful musicianship, but I felt as if a friend had been taken away. I first saw Rush live in 1977 and became an instant fan. During my Marine Corps years, the band was massively popular among fellow leathernecks, but hadn’t achieved the…
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Advent And Loss
Our old cat died today. Purrl was 14 years old, a Texas cat as rangy and prickly as a mesquite tree, as spastic as a rabid coyote, as affectionate as a lovestruck Lulabelle. She had been going downhill since Bonnie died. So skinny…when she sprawled out in front of the wood stove, she looked like a tractor wheel had smushed her down flat. She was nervous, restless, unhappy. And today, she left this world and went into the next. Purrl was an extraordinarily sweet cat. She used to pat my wife’s face with the pink pads of her paw, pulling my wife’s face to look directly into her eyes —…
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Feast Day Of Saint Imina
The tenacity of the remaining leaves at our farm was finally bested by Saturday night’s wind and rain. The limbs are now mostly bare, and the leaves are piled in ankle-high drifts, as if the sky deposited beige origami figures during the hours of darkness. The little suncatchers, who labored so faithfully for the trunk and limbs, have fulfilled their purpose and have died and returned to the earth to fertilize the same trunk and limbs. And in the spring, when the sun swings round again in its power, the trunk will push power into the limbs and the limbs will be dotted with green popcorn exploding on the tips,…
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Jacketed By Grief
My wife and I returned the other day from a lovely, happy trip back home to visit family in Texas. I had planned to post a summary of our vacation once we’d settled back in. My plans came to a sudden and shattering stop this morning when I arose from sleep to let the dogs outside and make coffee. My dog was right where she’d been when I went to bed last night, almost in the exact same position. But the old girl had died in her sleep. She had gone away forever, exiting my life in the space of a mere six hours, taking her warmth and her presence…
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Between
On my walk this morning before dawn, my shoes marking my cadence on the gravel, the deer in the distance alerted by the measured stride of a two-legged creature, I was exactly between two heavenly bodies. At the country cemetery, I looked west and saw the moon hanging high above the kingdom she ruled during last night’s dark hours. And then I turned and went to the fence and looked east, and I saw the pockets of mist in the distant hollows of this chain of mountains, mist lit by the light crawling up from behind those peaks, and then in an instant the day had begun and the regal…