Mortality around us, and in us
On the first full weekend in March, we flew from Ohio to Virginia for my 93-year-old mother's funeral. That alone would have had me thinking about the impermanence of life, although it is hardly the only death in the family. Both my wife and I lost spouses. My father died more than 20 years ago. Both of my wife's parents are gone. Last year we bid farewell to a beloved uncle. There had been many months of late when Mom's various ailments had me wondering when the call about her would come. Yet when it did, it was wrenching; I still have those times when I think I should be calling her, and she has been in the front or back of my mind ever since she passed. Moreover, our funeral travels took place during the beginning of the larger national grappling with mortality. COVID-19 was in the air, and the alarms about it visible at airports, where the desks by the departure gates had bottles of hand sanitizer and you could begin to see people in gloves and masks. We returned t...
