We carried the valuable cargo, ashes of one other transcendental voyager, as we approached the gravesite up the hill. On our approach, an important marble crypt loomed giant, the right commercial for the cemetery.

It was George Gershwin.

Think about the night leisure when the gates closed. It appeared like karma to me, as I had been one of many creators of the Gershwin Prize, given by the Library of Congress for in style songwriting within the custom of the Nice American Songbook.

Our first honoree was Paul Simon. As we approached the open grave, all that Simonizing went roaring by means of my ears, drowning out my abiding tinnitus. “A winter’s day, in a deep and darkish December …” The coolness of the day whistled its personal tune. I tossed a handful of filth into the area the place my outdated buddy would spend eternity, or as a lot of it as we are able to think about. It didn’t appear practically sufficient, so I took up the gravedigger’s shovel and heaped mounds and lumps into the opening. They have been like hugs from me one last time — the very last thing I may give a pal.

The succession of deaths in a yr’s span had turn into an excessive amount of, a relentless wave. My mom led the pack, foiling the oddsmakers by brief days who had put certain bets on her reaching her centennial. It was a blessing. The bodily isolation of the pandemic had sundered her mobility, and the social desolation had despatched her dementia into overdrive. Our final go to was the one one in our shared lifetime during which we couldn’t snigger. She had already fled.

I flew throughout the nation in time to be with my uncle in his last hours, whereas his pulse received lighter and lighter, finally flying away like a near-weightless sparrow. My cousins and I sat on his mattress in silent communion. From the depths of his permeable unconsciousness, he had raised my hand to his lips, not as soon as however twice, breaking my coronary heart the primary time, mending it the second. How would I survive with out our weekly transcontinental laugh-fest? Each Sunday I nonetheless attain for the cellphone, and every time my hand pauses in midair, caught by a silent cry. What’s the ringtone of nothingness? If I make a joke and there may be no person listening, is it nonetheless a joke, or a prayer?

Then my aunt, the topic of an earlier column for her experiences as a refugee in World Warfare II, handed peacefully into one other place and time. There, households are reunited and struggle isn’t any extra. My mom, my uncle, my aunt, one two three, one two three, one. This practice, certain for glory, has left the station. Standing up the hill from Gershwin, flinging the filth that sooner or later covers us all, I noticed I used to be rapidly operating out of the fingers to rely the useless. I consider Samuel Beckett — “I can’t go on, I’ll go on.”

Subsequent week would have been my father’s 102nd birthday. A Capricorn, the final earth signal of the zodiac, he had its traits of endurance, perseverance and dedication to his household. He served within the massive one, coaching our flyboys, then carried on in peacetime. He started as a lawyer, even of mood, logical, analytical, not simply swayed, stoic to the final. I always remember the nightmare night when he had kidney stones, but we needed to beg him to go to the hospital.

Right here we’re in a brand new yr. The vacations have come and gone. On uncommon events, when the youngsters are dwelling, I really feel a part of a continuum. More often than not we’re dispersed throughout the nation. I cling to my spouse like a dock, holding my boat from drifting away. I by no means perceive such pillars of the earth. I don’t have her power. Each dying destroys me. Maybe it was my childhood bronchial asthma, the moments at which I felt the breathlessness of dying. Dread of mortality shadows me. I remorse on a regular basis that my container got here marked “fragile.” It’s a lifelong ache.

You might learn Joseph Campbell, Ernest Becker, Viktor Frankl, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, Testaments (New and Previous), Edna St. Vincent Millay, Oscar Wilde, J. M. Barrie, Robert Frost, Allen Ginsberg. Take your choose. All of them wrestle the demons of decline and dying. With every year we flip the web page and hope we now have chapters but to go. Inside our heads we’re any age we really feel we’re. My mom was at all times a child. My father was at all times a dad. I’m one of many misplaced boys, amazed on the age I’ve come to be, questioning who is aware of the place the time goes. I’m endlessly looking out. Constitution member of the off-key singing membership, I whistle by the grave. I try “Rhapsody in Blue.” By George, I do!

Dalton Delan might be adopted on Twitter @UnspinRoom. He has gained Emmy, Peabody and duPont-Columbia awards for his work as a tv producer.