“Making the arrangements” is a horrible phrase.
I have endured a season of weddings and now it appears that I have sadly stumbled into the season of funerals. Two uncles now, both passings trumpeted with the same hollow invocation, “Jonathan, ______ died last night.” Always followed by a bank of silence because what does that even mean to you at 6 in the morning? Is that code for “I don’t know if I can put up with this constant torrent of death, loss, and sickness” because that’s how my brain translated it.
And the tears. The nasty ones that come from someplace that’s not your eyes, but maybe the saddest spring trickling from the darkest mountain.
My uncle Luther never seemed invincible. Newports, drinking, a heart attack when I was too young to realize what that meant, working as an MP in Vietnam (and, no, no tales from that era, kid), springing from the trailer on MLK Drive to the two-story mansion with the pool table and the constant Anita Baker and the 2600. And “Co-Cola” graduating to an offer of Crown and Coke from Aunt Rita when I seemed old enough to tease me with irresponsibility. All these things seemed to make him, or at least the dream I dressed him up in - “I live my life unburdened” -the most fragile, the most fraught with danger. But the best. The Cadillac. The Boston in spades. The pitbull.
Goddamn, the ride is too short. It’s too short.
