times passing

Yesterday, my younger son's main squeeze through him a small birthday get-together at a refurbished train station here in Northampton -- the same station to which my father took me as a kid ... and we would stand on the platform and I would wave to the engineer of a steam-belching engine.

My son is 23 today and it was a pleasant party yesterday ... one that came close to a farewell for him before he heads out to the Middle East for a military-deployment cycle early next month. There was booze and cake and the party was held in the bar (train station) where my son works weekends as a bouncer. I went, though I knew it would wear me out ... and it did. But I liked it.

Only afterwards did I hear that my son's boss had OD'ed on heroin that very day ... at home ... dead ... and my son was sad even as the humming noise of military life buzzed in the back of my mind. My son was sad for his friend/boss. I was sad for ... Well, being sad for death is so hard because death doesn't give a shit for sadness. It just goes on and on and leaves speechlessness in its wake.

Coincidentally, a friend in New York emailed me how hard it was for him to get his mind around the fact that his younger sone had turned 20. How does that work? What does that imply? I guess it's like death: There is a truth and that truth has what might be called a wake but neither the truth nor the wake gives a shit. Both just go on and on in ever-dimished purring.

My wife says she will miss my son. And so will I, but I am to weak to let that blazing light in. Don't go!, says one voice. Go! and stand tall in whatever height you turn out to be ... Leave me! ... oh please don't leave! Stand, stand, stand....

Don't fall....

I pray...

Take me if falling is a priority.