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Thursday, November 06, 2003 The last several days: gray, wet, cold. Overcast, temperatures in the low to mid-30s. Rain falling through much of it, fog coming and going. All of which has its own beauty in this rural, mountainous country -- fall colors long vanished, the landscape now a blend of browns, grays, greens. Vermont, late autumn, winter not far off. On Tuesday, the lying bastards in the local weather service (and I mean that in the nicest possible way) predicted that yesterday would bring sunlight and higher temperatures. Yesterday, when that didn't pan out, they predicted the same thing in stronger terms for today. When I woke up in this morning's pre-dawn hours, a glance out a window showed a few lonely stars shining through thinning cloud cover. Thin enough that the daylight hours brought some actual sunshine. Wan, diffuse, thin, but still sunshine. For a short, fleeting while anyway. Then the cold gray reasserted itself. No rain, though, for which I'm grateful. Tuesday morning I hung out with my downhill neighbor, Mo, for a while. His wife, Kay -- in the hospital with cancer a couple of weeks back [see entry of October 27] -- passed on last Thursday night. Since then, Mo's had plenty of folks around, family and friends, keeping him company through this major life passage. I stopped by during a lull in the activity, no one there but Mo and his two small dogs, Sally and Corky. Sally: a fat beagle who has Mo wrapped around one of her little, er, toes; Corky: a smaller pooch, maybe a Chow -- thick reddish-brown fur; small, bright black eyes; pointy ears, a pointy snout. Kind of cute, not terribly bright. Mo dotes on them both, they dote on him and take advantage when they can -- especially Sally, running off whenever she can manage it to cavort around the hill here for an hour before returning home, pantingly happy, free of shame/guilt. It's an odd phenomenon: Mo is a hunter, has been for most of his 80+ years. Loves to hunt, will go after just about anything that runs, flies or swims. Except his two designated companion critters: a half-bright carouser and a half-dim lap dog. Considering the turns his recent existence has taken -- getting a knee replaced four or five weeks back; Kay coasting suddenly downhill healthwise, getting diagnosed with cancer, spending a week in health care facilities before making a graceful exit from this mortal coil scant days after their 60th wedding anniversary -- Mo seems to be doing all right. (He is as close to being indestructible as any human being I've ever met, and I sometimes think that after everyone else here on the hill lives out their days and topples over, he'll still be tooling around on his ATV, shooting squirrels off our headstones.) He wasn't ebullient, he wasn't prancing about in joy, but he was all right. Able to talk about the impact of Kay's passing on his life, able to talk about other things, able to laugh when the conversation turned to subjects that warranted laughter. It turns out that Mo and Kay had agreed they would both be cremated, their remains mixed together in a double urn which would then be buried. Which means that Kay's ashes will reside in that urn in Mo's living room until he punches out. It turns out, he said, that not everyone in his family is crazy about that arrangement, and he doesn't care. He's got the urn, her ashes are in it, and that's how things will remain until he drops off the twig and they toss his body into the fire. At which point the rest of the plan will go into effect and their names will grace a joint headstone poking up out of a bit of Vermont countryside. I'll say this: Mo, at 82 or so years of age, is healthier, clearer, more mobile than either of my parents were when their respective odometers showed that kind of mileage. He's a crusty, capable old guy, and as far as I'm concerned he should enjoy the rest of his 3-D tenure however he sees fit. Not that my opinion matters. I'm just saying. Tonight there's going to be a wake-ish type of event at a funeral home twenty minutes north of here. I'll make an appearance, pay my respects, enjoy the people-watching to be had, remember conversations with Kay around their kitchen table. Tomorrow's the funeral service -- I'll skip that. Funerals don't do it for me. To each their own. You know? rws 3:05 PM [+] |