Day

It’s TABday, the fourth anniversary of Mother’s exit day and it’s Halloween. I’d like to see some damn ghosts NOW please. Ya know, a little spectral visit from my Amazing Bob or Mother or, for that matter, any of my other dearly departeds would be just the thing. I’ll make a fresh pot of coffee and hit Saint Fratellis for phantasm half moons and poltergeist Pizzelles. We’ll have a party!

In the last few years, my beloved became more and more worn down and burnt out by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune – his body’s increasing treachery and betrayal. He was dispirited. Fighting the increasingly uphill, boulder riddled health wars each year was making the battle to destroy the Death Star look like a sunny, calm,  70º day on Nantasket – with endless cookies too.

To My Loved Ones:
I don’t expect you to be brave
    Don’t want you to be tough
Just to make it through each week
    Is much more than enough
               January 2011, Quincy
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Living Too Long
People now live to be a hundred years
Mickey D’s looking for some good cashiers
Sometimes it’s just better to say so long
There is such a thing as living too long

People run off with the pension funds
Ev’rybody stands around looking stunned
Get a certain age and you ain’t so strong
There is such a thing as living too long

People my age are all boring as hell
Spending their time at some wishing well
There’s no place much that I really belong
There is such a thing as living too long
                February 2011, Quincy
                Written after another visit to the urologist
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My threads of thought get broken
Or at the very least derailed
By ev’ry third word spoken
By a deaf man Signing braille.
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Well, here’s to all the fitness freaks
    a source of great advice,
Who told us how to experience
    and eat pinecones and rice.
They wrote their books and opened stores
    and helped us feel profound,
Who put out healthful DVDs
    and sleep now underground
               March 2013, Quincy – age 71
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Death seems like a vehicle that
    You disappear inside
The vehicle leaves, people wave,
    Destination unknown.
                April 2013, Quincy

I know that it was time for TAB to go – physically and emotionally. He was ready. I’m quite certain that I would never have been so.