My lame Right Hand and Sad News of a Friend’s Death

I’m holding a pen with a thick glove, which is filled with a salve to fight inflammation. My location is in bed with our feral cat beside me. He is now in his 17^th year and content to stay indoors. My mood can be described as maudlin because I’ve reached the end of the road (or rope) when it comes to my right hand. Strangely, I just realized this December 5^th that I had my left knee replaced six years ago today, and the right six months later. The surgery for Carpal T. is supposed to be easy. That is if I pass the required “nerve” test. The one restriction after the surgery is no tennis for six weeks. I didn’t get back on the tennis court until the 8^th week with both knees. But this is what I will admit, that each day at 82 plus, I awaken with a rolling ship in my head. What do I hear? Herman Melville’s declaration that, “Old age is a shipwreck.”

Yet this is small stuff.

Last evening I learned of a friend’s death in the U.K. What’s strange is that yesterday I spent time with two address books. The older one (the new one too) disturbed me because over and over I read “deceased” by someone’s name. Later on my computer, I noticed there were 30 messages in Spam. I scanned them and was about to hit delete all, when I recognized a name. I’ve only known one Perrett. I opened the e-mail. It was from an old friend’s son who had written to let me know his mother had died peacefully at home and he, the son, was with husband Ray. This couple had lost one of their two sons not that long ago.

In the early to the mid-1990s, Mike and I were friends with this couple in Venezuela.  Ray was the British Defense Attache and Mike in this position for the USA. After Caracas we kept in contact and visited them in the U.K.  And each Christmas I awaited Sheila’s hand-written and wonderfully lucid letter. I sound matter-of-fact. But what I feel is the loss of another person whose life touched mine in a meaningful way. I remember being in Jane Austin’s village and visiting her house because Ray and Sheila took me there, no doubt repeating an experience that was all too familiar to them. And their house, centuries old, enchanted me.  Mike, too, spent time with this couple when he was in the U.K. on business.

Later today I will struggle, as I always do, with a letter to the man (or the woman) who survives a mate’s death.

I think now… this early morning, of all the friends who are no longer alive. I have remembered a simple poem I love from The Dream Keeper, a small and brilliant book of poetry by Langston Hughes.

I loved my friend / He (she) went away from me

            The story ends / Soft as it began

            I loved my friend.

I no longer have the book and lack energy to check the wording. But think how many you know for whom this is true.  Until next week….and the book club’s fifth meeting for 2025.