A Dirge For Old and Absent Friends

from: "Dear Men and Women", by John Hall Wheelock: (in memory of Van Wyck Brooks) "...I have learned it from them at last, who am now grown old A happy man, that the nature of things is tragic And meaningful beyond words, that to have lived Even if once only, once and no more, Will have been -- oh, how truly -- worth it." We, the aged, often have borne that ultimate separation -- death; or, worse for some, banishment to dementia or to a dreaded exile at any generic "home" where visitors rarely enter and hurry to depart. Left with our diminished dim impressions, we all -- confused -- recall old errant conversation, guided gossip in half-remembered settings to which we surviving few paid scant attention. But now those places, long abandoned, all assume unmistakable purpose: marking for us the decreasing distance from our individual fated final final destinations.