Passing Game

Bracing for the blow is useless. It will hurt no matter how often the intellect insists that it's in charge and that matters are well in hand. Might as well practice in a casket. Open the lid. Close it. Feel the confines around your shoulders. Maybe a giggle will break the spell. But it won't accomplish what can't be achieved, no more or less than play acting at non-existence or practicing grief could.

The pickle brine will eventually evaporate. So will the bath of bleach that I used to submerge long, wiry strands of poison ivy vines in my backyard. So too will my days and my memory in the minds of survivors when enough years have flown. Even immediately, attention cannot and will not be paid, despite the plea of the wife of Miller's Loman. Ones who remain must think of themselves and the business of life is life, to paraphrase liberally from the ever pithy President Coolidge.

The secret is to love and to understand. "Forgive everyone everything" said Morrie of "Tuesdays With Morrie."  He also spoke of this issue of attention. None of us ever got enough of it, he asserted: that loving nurturing touch, like no other, the enveloping and sweetly enfolding embrace of our mother. Well, try to return that …perhaps to that very mother who may be feeling like a child herself as her world contracts, more superannuated than perhaps you shall ever be.

Super Bowl Day approaches. The escapism is so palpable it's nearly laughable. Ritualized substitutes for warfare are very comforting and watching large grown men assault each other for sixty minutes on a mid-winter's Sunday lets us shout or pout with heavenly or hellish yo-yo-ing emotions that we imagine transport us to the rarefied realms of those who are truly alive. The memory of a bloodied, bald man kneeling on a football field of half a century ago, tells a different tale. Raw courage or dawning enlightenment of futility's sway and the enfeeblement by time: what wisdom exactly did Mr. Tittle harvest that day and how did he characterize his place in the football world at that moment?

Everyone dies and everyone loses. First and foremost, we lose our lives. But we lose most everything along the way. We lose money, we lose spouses, we lose sweethearts, we lose parents, we lose our home, our favorite automobile, our appetite, we lose friends, we lose touch, we lose our hair, our teeth, our memory and sometimes we lose our sense of humor, irretrievably. Another view tells of change being the only thing of permanence, this ironic dependability we are encouraged to welcome by the infuriatingly and supposedly well adjusted. This is a kind of mocking conceit, much like the saying "sincerity is the most important thing and once you learn how to fake that, you've got it made."

We are too flip, too eager to express how clever we are, whether it's a succinct comment on a Facebook thread, a tabloid headline or some well turned phrase on the lips of a late night television talk show host. True clowns make us uncomfortable; we are more inclined to mistake venomous taunts and cynical assaults for mirth. Self-deprecation is not cool. Opening the heart to share its blood with others is avoided like a plague.

So, what's a road to consider?  Prepare to be a fool without seeking pity. Know that you are one of the race of men and like those leaves that Homer described: brightly growing on the tree of life for a brief while and then tumbling, tossed, crunched underfoot and finally crumbling food for the earth. Live and love until you're called and know that neither the memory of your spiritual gifts nor the gifts themselves will ever die if you have truly touched your survivors and they in turn have been moved to teach and touch theirs.