The Duchess, Hans Holbein the Younger, Dance of Death, 1538. Pretty sure if Death was playing a violin when my dad flew away, it was Mahler.

There are fairly positive placards to be discovered–usually somewhere behind closed eyes–when Death (not waltzes in, there was no waltzing in my dad’s case) knocks down continents to claim, abscond-with, pose in a peasant blouse splotched in redwood forest mulch and maidenhead ferns as Mother Nature. The placards read:

NO MORE PAIN P.S./A GOOD THING
or:
IS AT PEACE/OR SOMETHING LIKE IT OMG (scrawled in a hard, lava-red script bleeding through even the darkest dream)
or:
WHATSA MATTER WITH U: LIVE LIVE LIVE
or:
EFFING HELL EFFING JUST SAY THE BIG EFFING GOODBYE U BIG GRIEVING GOOF
or (my favorite):
ALLISWELLALLISWELLALLISWELL

All IS well. Emailed memories and snippets of our dad from friends of his we haven’t seen since we were kids fly in–breath-swiping missives. Much good is suddenly clarified about one half of the complicated unit that raised my sisters and me.

And so I let my breath out for the first time since somewhere deep in late July.

The sound resembles a mildly breaking wave (w/distant seagull call).

Yours in sweeter dreams and a violin-playing Death (O Holbein–so crafty–for me it would be Beethoven’s 3rd, first movement–et tu?),

PB