Weddings, Funerals and Walking on Fire

Technically, I'm on vacation right now. Not doing much with my vacation -- have a gig in upstate New York next week, might visit friends here and there -- but right now, it just feels like I'm coming to the end of a fairly brutal weekend, except that I don't have to go to work Monday morning. Which is something.

Mostly, this weekend, I'm thinking a lot about absent friends, and about missed opportunities. Almost bizarrely, I've been thinking about the novelist Victor Villaseñor, who used to come into Upchurch-Brown Booksellers in Laguna Beach when I worked there a lifetime ago. One time, he invited me to go fire-walking with him. He was probably joking, but I begged off anyhow, but really, how stupid was I not to leap at the opportunity to go do something that strange and cool with a writer that awesome. Was I just being chicken-shit? Damned if I know. It was all a long time ago.

I've also been thinking a lot about my friend Elmo, and something he once said to me (he was quoting another friend, as I recall. Brian Q.? Mike S.? The memory is hazy.) He said, "Buy a good suit, because from here on out, it's only weddings and funerals."

We were in our 20s when he said that. We're in our 40s now, and there's been a lot more to both our lives than weddings and funerals.I've still never walked on fire, but there have been all sorts of weird and wonderful things, lots of other interesting and amazing people. It's been a lot of things, but it's rarely been boring. Sometime I choose to be boring, because I need to decelerate, but on the whole, it's been a good life, and there's ostensibly still some time on the clock. Ostensibly.

Because there have been a lot of weddings and funerals. Just recently, I was overjoyed to hear news of three weddings, all friends whom I seldom see anymore, but am always glad to encounter when our paths cross. I'm always overjoyed when people I love are happy, and really, I'm a sucker for a wedding. I've seen a lot of marriages blow up, of course, same as everybody else. But I always like that one, shining moment when love triumphs over everything else; how for that one moment, anything is possible.  I'm sentimental that way.

But this weekend began Friday night in New Hampshire, with me reading a poem at a funeral for a friend, Cindy DeRego. Cindy, the wife of my old friend Jeff DeRego, had died recently after a long struggle with cancer. She was one of the most solid, unambiguously good people I had ever known -- genuine, friendly, caring. She left behind Jeff and their two amazingly smart kids, Meg and Ian. I've lost a lot of people over the years, and if I'm totally honest, a lot of them had lived lives that had clearly shaved some time off the ends. Cindy wasn't one of those. I had fully expected she would recover. It seemed like she had that kind of story. It seemed like she was one of the people who should be here, and I was utterly gobsmacked to discover that she wouldn't be.

Jeff asked me to read my poem, An American Love Song, at the service, and I'll admit, that concerned me a bit, too, because that's a poem about men not being able to survive after their love had passed on. (I wrote it after Johnny Cash died.) Seeing Jeff at the funeral reassured me, a bit. He was hurting, obviously, but there's still a lot of strength in him. I admire him immensely. I always have. But here, I was certain he was stronger than I would be in if I were in his shoes. I don't ever want to be in his shoes.

And still, there was love in that room. The immense, honest, sometimes bawling sort of love that loss leaves in its wake. When I left New Hampshire, I felt like I had said goodbye. I don't always feel that at funerals. I don't like to say "goodbye" to people, although -- as I said -- it's happened rather a lot.

A short while ago, there was an interview on the Web with my dear friend, Jack McCarthy.

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I've known Jack for nearly 20 years, and hearing him talk so calmly and bravely about what are, undoubtedly, his last months was nearly heartbreaking. I want to tell him how much his friendship has meant over the years, how much I admire him as a poet and as a man. I start to type the words, but they all vanish as soon as my fingers touch the keyboard. I'm not ready to live in a world without him, yet, even though I see him seldom these days. That doesn't mean his place in my heart is at all diminished. And still I'm silent. The words overwhelm my voice.

I am surrounded right now by love and loss, weddings and funerals, and I can't help but feel like I'm also far away somewhere, walking on fire. This is all so impossible, this loving until your heart near-bursts. Sometimes, it's unbearable. But it's also what it means to be alive.