Today was sucked into another day. You could think it a new day if you allowed yourself to be fooled. You could believe its lie, let it tell you its gauzy seductions, like, “I promise I’ll change, I’m not the day you think I am, I’ll show you something shiny and bright.”

But I’ve seen days like this come and go. And there all the same, They promise you something in the morning then leave you and run off with someone else an hour before last call. They’re hussy days. Easy to spot the cheap cracked makeup and frayed cuffs. Well I’m not buying, and I’ll set no expectations.

What I want is a real day. A brand new day, and something far more substantial than the one Sting sang about. With Sting it always comes down a blush of adolescent crush/love. “You’re the tunnel, I’m the train.” Please! If it wasn’t for Stevie Wonder’s harmonica I’d…

No until some dawn sneaks up on me and surprises the venetian blinds off my house, I’m saying screw it. I’m not going to try make something of my day…like I ever could. I’ll let the day jerk me around and I won’t feel it cause I’ll make myself limp. That much I can control.

… … …Okay, maybe there’s a problem here. Maybe it’s kinda like this:

This morning it was comforting to hear the shopping cart stopping beneath our window, then the muffled rummaging made by its driver, then the loose rattling as it was pushed further up the alley. There was sanity in the simple sounds of a collection of cans and bottles jostling about inside plastic bags stacked in a wire cart.

I’m aware that these sounds represent failure and tragedy as well. But this morning, at 4:30 AM, in the wake of shifting sleep, and in that vulnerable off-kilter bubble of time before the morning routine has had a chance to orient, in that vertiginous place where cares turn into dark derisive caricatures, it was the shopping cart plowing through shallow snow that moved through all my tangled inner lines and brought some straightening to my mind.

Fitful sleep brings sketchy dreams. But last night, if I did have a dream, I forgot it. Probably a good thing. 

But I do wait for the good dream. One reason I think is because dreams are the closest experiences we have to transcendent glimpses. They give us, occasionally, I think, a sight line to the other side of death. And, or, equally important, they give us comfort, some hope, they give our souls a safeguard.

Months, perhaps a year, after my father’s death, I dreamt him. He was wearing a magnificent blue suit in which he was completely relaxed. He sat at the head of our old dark oak dinner table in the middle of our store that he had converted to living space. When he moved in his chair there was light just at the places his suit folded and creased. His kids were sitting around the table. All of us leaning into some story. Then he was laughing, and we were all laughing. And that was the dream. And it was all that was needed.

Surely everyone stands as a mere breath.
Surely everyone goes about like a shadow.
Surely for nothing they are in turmoil;
And now, O Lord, what do I wait for?
My hope is in you. (Psalm 39)

Robert Bruce MacLaughlin died yesterday. Rose called from the hospital room, the family and most of the band was there. I pictured the room. They would all be holding on to each other.

 The day before yesterday Debbie and I had visited. That day the mark of death was upon Bob in a way it hadn’t been before. His grey body, like an empty carapace, was not the body of Bob.

And there were no more words from this man who had always carried the conversation. There was only groaning with what I thought was the deep intent of an articulation that never came. There was uneven breathing, sudden movements of eyebrows and eyelids and uncomprehending eyes.

And there was hand squeezing. This much there was. There was hand squeezing. It was his hands that looked the same, looked like Bob’s hands. Perhaps because so much of his life was in his hands, death seemingly could not take his hands.

We sat through the afternoon and watched a water-colour sun set in pastel outside the hospital room.

This room was a home for the past two and half months. A room where the windowsill filled quickly with vases and a rotation of flowers, where walls were eventually covered with pictures from family, cards from friends, home made posters from school children, drawings, placards, billboard notices, and more pictures. And there was music, in the end, classical.

This was home for more than just Bob. Home for his lady, his family, his close friends, some who faithfully came and sat at this side every day. Home for all kinds of grieving love and longing.

And now this man, who accepted much, readily accepted others, who picked up a friendship after years of gap without missing a beat, as if time evaporated, is now evermore accepted.