Death, be not proud...

as i sit and write, it would seem those mayans were wrong...or were they?...it has been a week of death, so to speak...an unfathomable tragedy at sandy hook elementary...which left those of us with no direct connection to the victims with a punch to the stomach and a catch in our throat...not with the personal task of a burial, a wake, a shiva...but then this week death started creeping from the perimeter...a lovely woman i have had the fortune of knowing from my writer's group lost her husband of many years to alzheimer's...i embraced her at shiva and saw her loss, her pain, and relief as well...her wish for his peace was answered, but what of her peace?...and then a funeral for a cousin, whom i had known so well as a boy, so much less as a man...a contemporary, born five weeks apart...sitting at his service and thinking about loss...what does it mean?...the eulogy and accounting of his life muffled by my memories of so long ago...the ones we try to grasp before they too are buried...memories of unspoken dreams of youth and sometimes in the pure bliss of having lived for the moment...i promised as i was handed the shovel graveside, battling a cold december wind, that death would never wrestle my memories...when it is my turn my soul will fly intact...floating with the unsung songs of all who went before me...