In "Antony and Cleopatra," Shakespeare has Enobarbus say this about Cleopatra, "Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety." Scholars have argued ever since over whether he was being frank and appreciative, or sarcastic and downright mean. Whatever the true intent, taking the words at face value, he could have been describing either of the ageing Anderson women.
As we advanced toward our 70s, no one would have thought of Greg or me as any other age. No doubt about it, we had gotten old! Mandy and Vic, on the other hand, could easily have been considered in their low 60s - or even high 50s. Obviously, they were no longer in their 20s, but in both faces and figures, there was some never-fading aspect of their beauty that couldn't be denied or overlooked. Greg and I had to laugh at the thought that - like the rock-and-roller Jerry Lee Lewis, who at the age of 22 married a 13-year old - we might be accused of "robbing some cradles" to acquire our "child brides."
There was one caveat to that picture. Mandy had been diagnosed with congestive heart failure in 2018. We had it pretty well controlled with diet and medicines to reduce her blood pressure and remove excess fluid. We knew it was incurable, but a person could live a long time if they took care of themselves.
We were especially cautious during the worst of the Covid years, as our advanced ages already made us particularly vulnerable to the disease, and any extra condition - like Mandy's heart troubles - could add more danger. She seemed to come through it okay, but there was no question that she had less stamina than she had always had before, and she had lost a little weight. She was still gorgeous, but as her closest observer, I noted those changes.
Still, I wasn't expecting anything in particular when one morning she led me out on our porch, and sat us down. She leaned against me, and we sat in silence for a while, looking out over east Portland to our silent volcanoes.
"There's nothing in life I could have wish for more than being your wife for all these years," she said.
I could have taken it as just a general statement of good feelings, but I instinctively knew it to be a kind of final pronouncement. Unexpected as it was, I still found that I had no thought of saying anything to deny or argue with her meaning. I simply said, "I feel the same way. You have been my life."
We sat a minute more in silence, then she rose. "I need to talk to my brother and sister," she said.
I started to get up to go with her, but she stopped me. "Don't worry. It isn't time, yet. Stay here, and I'll be right back."
She was gone maybe 20 minutes, then reappeared alone, and sat down beside me. She linked her arm with mine. "We can't know, Dan, if I will have memories after I go. We don't know if there will be any of me to have any memories. If I am still something, and if I'm in a place that allows memories, I want the ones I retain most vividly to be lying in your arms all night, and seeing all our family gathered together. I'm trusting you to provide the first, and I have Vic working on the second. Does that sound reasonable?"
I couldn't trust myself to speak. I just squeezed her arm tighter against me.
For the rest of the day, you wouldn't have guessed that anything unusual was going on. We did our usual chores, had our usual discussions - in fact, everything seemed very usual. Mandy and I retired early. After a significant amount of kissing, touching, and professing our love for one another, Mandy lay her head on my arm, curled up against me, and went to sleep. I don't know how much sleep I actually got. I know I spent a lot of time assuring myself that I could still hear or feel her breath, and feel her pulse or heartbeat. We woke in the same position we were in when she went to sleep.
I got up, and prepared myself to greet the day. As I left the bedroom, Vic came in to help Mandy get dressed. In the living room, I found that the clan was already well assembled, and Greg and others were hard at work preparing breakfast.
When Mandy appeared with Vic, I would have defied anyone to say that she was sick. She was radiantly lovely in a yellow dress that she knew I greatly admired on her. She didn't want breakfast, but went directly to one of our big armchairs, and sat down. For the next hour, she visited with each kid, their spouses, and their children separately. She had us take photos of her with each one, then photos of her with family groups, with kids and spouses, and with her, Vic, Greg, and me, individually and collectively. When we were finished, we must have taken over 100 pictures.
When we were done, she admitted she was a little tired, and asked me to take her to our bedroom. "Please don't leave, if you don't have to," she said to the group. "It'll only be a little while." In our room, we sat on the edge of our bed. "I don't need to rest," she whispered to me. "I wanted it to be just you and me." She leaned against me, and I put my arm around her. We didn't speak, and it must have been several minutes before I realized she wasn't breathing. I couldn't find a pulse. I settled her on our bed, covered her with a blanket, kissed her, and went out to tell the others.
It seemed impossible. My wonderful, ageless wife - Amanda Anderson-Rafferty - died the morning of March 10, 2022, age 74 years, 3 months and 8 days, from the final effects of congestive heart failure. The conclusion still was beyond comprehension. We had celebrated our 50th anniversary on September 20, 2019.
If you've ever lost someone really close to you, then you'll understand what I mean when I say I couldn't do anything for several days. I didn't seem to have either the will or the brain to take it all in. Greg, Vic, and the kids were there to save me from complete despair, but it was still a struggle to get myself moving again.
I hope I've said enough in this history for you to understand how precious Mandy was - not just to me, but as a human being. She was light, she was beauty, she was practicality, she was honesty, and she was charity itself. The four of us didn't need any extra bonds to keep us together, but I think in many ways Mandy was the "super glue" that sealed the deal.
A few days after her passing, Vic and Greg were telling stories of a Mandy from before my time. They talked about a girl (well, young woman) that I only knew as kind of a shadowy precursor of "my" Mandy, but in everything they said, I could see her face and hear her voice.
Vic told about their birthday trip to Salt Lake City, when she and Greg were just really discovering one another. Mandy had told me about her being the designated chaperone on that trip. They were taking pictures in their motel room, and Mandy suggested she take a shot of Vic sitting on Greg's lap. Vic "protested" that it would be unseemly. Mandy replied "Sis, I know you know the way." She did. Greg and Vic both agreed it was one of their favorite pictures, but they never showed it to Chuck and Alice (or didn't for a long time; I forget which), thinking they might get the wrong idea. Greg added that wasn't quite the end of that episode. Once Vic was comfortably on his lap and Mandy had taken the photo, Mandy suggested that their children would love the picture. Vic protested that Mandy had forced her onto the lap of a man she "hardly knew," and now she was talking about their children! "I think I remember almost the exact words of Mandy's reply to that," said Greg. "Oh, come on, sis. Who are you kidding? Remember, I saw you two greet each other when we returned from vacation. If a kiss could cause pregnancy, that one was worth twins, at least.” "That kiss," Vic reminisced. "That was something, all right. It certainly removed any doubt my parents might have had about how far our relationship had advanced."
Greg had gone on to comment on how Mandy could shock, then make him laugh, when she said things he just didn't expect a high school girl to say. For example, Mandy had been teaching him to dance. Greg had stayed at the Anderson house one evening and Mandy asked if he'd like a quick lesson since he was there. "I said something like, 'it's a school night. Shouldn't a 17-year old be headed for bed?' Without looking at me, she asked, 'Is that what you say to your 19-year old?'"
Vic had laughed at that. "I remember some of those. I was talking to her after I taught Greg how to back up a tractor. You know about that, don't you Dan?" I did. "Well, Greg and I were alone at the refuge, because Mandy and my parents had done our usual Sunday family trip to town. I had stayed home, pleading I had a big test to study for. I did, but mostly we wanted a little privacy while I was giving Greg tractor lessons. Mandy knew something had transpired besides my studying for a test, and she wanted all the details. I confessed that I had been teaching Greg to drive a tractor. I remember she gave a little gasp. 'Well, that wasn’t what I expected. Is "driving a tractor" a new code phrase for…?' She didn't need to finish."
We all laughed at that, but when I looked over at Vic, I saw tears on her cheeks. "She was a funny, mischievous, unpredictable character, but she was also my champion and my defender. I remember when Greg wanted to take me to the movies after my birthday party. Daddy was upset with us - I think it was still about the post-vacation kiss - and I was afraid he wouldn't let me go. We had what turned into a little family meeting, and Mandy jumped in with both feet. Oh, I wish I could remember her exact words. They were beautiful! It went something like this: 'Dad, these people are so responsible they're boring! They like each other, and want to hold hands in the movies. They want to kiss a time or two before the end of the night. They will undoubtedly do the hand holding and kissing even if they don’t go to the movies. Just say okay! There, that’s my two cents worth.' Daddy kind of glared at her, but said 'I think that was more like a dime. Okay, you win.' I forgave her the 'boring' remark."
I remember Greg had been listening quietly. "That turned out to be a pretty nice evening, didn't it?" He was silent again, and I was sure he was collecting some thoughts. "Maybe one of my favorite memories of Mandy was when I took her to Pocatello with me, to see a football game - I think it may have been Portland State - and to let her visit with her sister. With Vic at school, it was probably the first time in their lives that they'd been apart more than a day or so - maybe not even that long.
"I knew she was excited to go, but she expressed concern that she would be interfering with Vic's and my 'lovey-dovey time.' I assured her that not much 'lovey-dovey' occurred on football Saturdays, and then nothing could have kept her from going. She kept me amused all the way to Pocatello with non-stop chatter, and Vic was as surprised and pleased as I had hoped she'd be. We went to lunch before the game, and ordered our usual burgers and fries.
"After the food arrived, the conversation flowed on nonstop, and the sisters got out a month and a half of stored things they needed to share. I seemed to have been forgotten. I didn’t mind. I just sat back, and watched them, and listened to them. Recently, Vic had discovered the word 'loquacious,' and it popped into my mind. They weren’t loquacious people, but they are probably what the poet had in mind who talked about loquacious birds, chattering away. I liked it, and found that I was already thinking of this as an extra special day."
This was my Mandy we were talking about!
***
Just a year after Mandy's passing, the second unbelievable thing happened. Greg had a heart attack, and died March 20, 2023. He'd been having some trouble with shortness of breath, and seemed to have little stamina in the last few weeks, but it was still unexpected when the end came. He lived 79 years, 4 months and 21 days. We had a family gathering much like we'd had with Mandy. Unfortunately, Greg couldn't be with us, in person.
I've written enough about Greg that you probably have a pretty good picture of him in your mind. I don't know what else to say, except that he and I went from a mandatory acquaintanceship (because of the girls) to the closest friends imaginable. We thought we had little in common, and it turned out we had everything.
When I remember Greg, it's hard not to think about his work with wildlife and the environment. But he was equally interested in, and equally eloquent in, talking and writing about social issues. In his last years, he wrote dozens of essays - some just an immediate opinion, some deeply researched and analyzed. He maintained a website, with information on whatever had his attention at the time.
One of the last things he wrote, just a few months before his death, was an essay he called, "Things I Won't Write About, Anymore." Those things were climate change, the Pandemic, and guns. He'd written regularly about all three, previously. He started out:
"I didn’t expect anything I wrote to really change the course of things, but I thought adding my two cents to the wisdom and knowledge of others would be worth it. It wasn’t. If anything, we are in worse shape on all three issues than ever before, and I see no hope of anything getting better. As a people, we have screwed ourselves, and probably the rest of the world in the bargain."
It would be hard to be more negative than that. Also, the first time I read the paper, I was surprised at some of his "language." In all my years with him, I seldom heard him utter even a "damn" or a "hell." As he went on to explain, I understood his frustrations.
"Climate Change: The warming effects of fossil fuels and greenhouse gases have been recognized for over two centuries. At first, there was some consideration that global warming might be 'a good thing,' shortening winters and making northern climes more inhabitable. There were experiments designed to take advantage of the knowledge, like spreading coal dust on glaciers to make them melt more quickly. As European cities choked to death under coal-polluted air, concern began to arise, but human optimism prevailed: we were smart enough to 'fix it' any time we wanted. We probably could have – back then – but we didn’t.
"A few climate scientists are still hopeful that we can stop – or at least, slow – the worst effects of climate change. Most have given up that hope. Even if all of our 'science' could be applied to the problems, it’s probably too late. The reality is that politics and public feelings won’t let the 'science' be applied. It would require too much of a change in life style, and would require too many 'sacrifices.' With a majority of even the climate change believers thinking that they won’t be affected, personally, we will continue to talk while doing nothing useful."
Greg finished this section with some discussion of grapes. Because of climate change, many traditional wine grape-growing areas no longer produce quality crops, but areas farther north are now supporting grapes that produce just as good (sometimes, better) wine. What is there to worry about, he asked, if we can always have good wine?
This is what he wrote on the Pandemic: "It’s been with us almost two years, and likely will be around for many more. Hopefully, it won’t continue to be the major killer it has been to date, but will just be a chronic reminder – like the flu or the common cold – that, once again, we screwed up in a big way. That could change, but it won’t. It won’t, because half of the U. S. population (and many more around the world) refuse to follow the most basic requirements to stop its spread: get vaccinated, wear a mask when with other people, and quit joining every crowd you can find. There may be a few people who have legitimate medical reasons for not getting the vaccine. Everyone else refusing to protect others and themselves is criminally stupid – stupid for obvious reasons, criminal because they are contributing to deaths that shouldn’t have to happen.
"I’ve had my shots, I wear a mask, and I seldom leave the house. I hope I don’t contract the Covid virus, but I still might, thanks to all my neighbors who don’t give a shit about my health. To them, I say: I hope you all get sick and die soon, so the spread of the disease can be contained. Only then can the rest of us go back to living a normal life."
Here's what he said about guns. "Every slaughter of innocent people by some gunner (with or without a known cause) used to be big news, and was always followed up by days of coverage of offered prayers and piles of proffered bouquets and teddy bears. Those events are so commonplace now, that you have to listen carefully to hear them mentioned once. Many U. S. cities are setting records for the number of homicides by firearms. (Here in Portland, Oregon, is no exception.) The United States have far more guns per capita than any other nation, and far more deaths by firearms than any other nation. Our response to more deaths by gunfire: buy more guns.
"We glory in our Gun Culture, and resist every effort to cut back on the deaths. I live in hope that I’ll die of some normal old age cause, rather than being shot by one of my neighbors when I’m on my way to the supermarket. Some days, I wonder if it’s a vain hope."
His denouement showed the depth of his frustration. "In recent years, there has been a lot of lip service given to the Great Law of the Haudenosaunee, the founding document of the Iroquois Confederacy:
'In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations.'
"Hell, we’ve shown clearly that – whether we’re talking about climate change, the Covid virus, gun deaths, or any of the other major messes we’ve created - we don’t even care about the second and third generations!"
***
I could tell you that I was devastated by Greg's death. I was, but I don't really know what that means. I felt like I'd actually lost some part of me. Yet, in my despair, I knew that what I was feeling - and not feeling! - must be trivial compared to what Vic was facing. Oh, she loved me, and undoubtedly needed me more than ever. She loved our kids and grandkids, for sure. But Mandy and Greg had really been her life, her heart. There was no way to repair or replace that.
She did "okay." Hers was a strong character, and not one to "give up." We continued to live in the Mount Tabor house, with our views of volcanoes, and with the hodgepodge of old and young descendants who sometimes lived with us, but were always around to help us and love us. She read. She wrote letters. She carried on with her and Greg's "business." As I think I've said, it had never become a business in a formal, organized way, but through their writings and workshops and meetings, they had accomplished a lot of the things they had wanted the business for. More than that, it had given them what Thomas Hardy had called "the good fellowship - camaraderie - occurring through the similarity of pursuits." In other words, their life was based on more than the expected man-woman chemistry. It was working closely together on objectives important to both. I guess I have to give the whole Hardy quote, as this is what Greg's and Vic's life was all about.
"Where happy circumstances permit its development (meaning, both romance and shared work), the compounded feeling proves itself to be the only love which is strong as death—that love which many waters cannot quench, nor the floods drown, besides which the passion usually called by the name is as evanescent as steam.”
That's love.
***
Sometimes when we were together, Vic would bring out the photo albums. We'd been through them all a dozen times, during the Covid years. She loved them, and so did I. So many memories. One I always loved to see was a picture of my lovely, 18-year old Mandy, removing some little bird from a mist-net. Another photo - probably taken the same day - showed both her and Vic putting little numbered bands on the legs of little birds (chickadees, I think, probably the ferocious ones she had described to me). There were some shots of Vic with bigger prey - removing ducks from a trap, so she and Greg could band them.
I remember one shot that obviously brought back some special - personal - memories to her. It was of her and Greg on their pre-wedding "honeymoon," standing beside Lake Tahoe, taken by some tourist like them who happened to walk by. "We had a motel room facing out over the lake," she explained. "There was no moon that night, but there were millions of stars in a cloudless clear sky. We lay in bed, and looked out into the darkness, where we knew the lake was." She paused, and I glanced over at her. She was smiling, obviously at a very good memory. "I was feeling very warmly toward Greg that night." I didn't ask for an explanation!
Another "memory lane" trip we took a number of times was with her, Mandy and Greg, to Salt Lake City, to see a real Broadway presentation of "Carousel." They stayed in a hotel, and ate in restaurants. Greg had taken a number of photos of the sisters together in the motel, and in front of the theater. There was also one of the three of them, taken by a passing theater-goer.
There were the shots that Mandy had taken in the motel room of Vic sitting - obviously contentedly - on Greg's lap. All three of them loved those photos, but - as I think I already said - didn't show them to the girls' parents, for fear Chuck or Alice would think something was "going on." In later years, both Mandy and Vic had assured me that there really wasn't any romance involved at the time, but the picture did look incriminating
That trip was Mandy's first real "adult" adventure, away from parents in a strange city. She remembered the details vividly all her life. She also remembered something else, that she shared with me in later years. She said she thought that was when she really started to love Greg.
All three knew that Chuck and Alice wouldn't have let Vic and Greg go off by themselves, and that "little sister's" presence was the agreement for the trip to occur. Mandy thought that "most guys" would have treated her like the unwanted, mandatory chaperone she was. The first moment she was alone with Greg, she acknowledged it, and thanked him for including her, anyway. "He smiled at me," she said, "and agreed that my presence was a 'necessity.' But then he said, 'What I want you to know is that, from the very first moments I started thinking about this trip, I was considering it as a special birthday celebration for two sisters who deserve it.' And that's the way the whole trip went: three young people, having a good time together. That was his real birthday gift to me."
Of course, there were photos of me - of me with Mandy (often looking kind of "cat swallowed the canary" contented, which we were) - of us with the kids - of four generations of Rafferty-Cleveland-Anderson-Johansen family together in North Dakota. Each one brought happy memories back to me, but also a little of the pain of loss and loneliness.
I know Vic felt the same mix of feelings, but we were so lucky to be able to share them, so close to our final parting.
***
Vic and I had one serious conversation in those days. I'll write it down here, pretty much in her own words.
"Our country is in a lot of trouble, right now. Everything seems out of control, and for no particular reason that you could name. Greg called it stupidity, and I think he was right. We've had other stupid periods in our history. Maybe the first was when our "founding fathers" drafted our Constitution, and decided that - in our free new nation - it was all right to keep our fellow human beings in slavery - kept and managed like livestock. It was certainly an ultimate act of stupidity for half our nation to prefer the carnage of the Civil War to letting loose of their human "livestock." It was stupidity when, in the wake of Japan bombing Pearl Harbor, we forced Japanese Americans - many of them second- and third-generation Americans - into concentration camps - behind barbed wire, in tents, in the desert - through the duration of the war. And it was utter stupidity when much of the American population followed Joe McCarthy on his inexorable and crazy hunt to weed all the "Communists" out of our midst - a stupidity that cost many Americans their careers, their livelihood, and their good names.
"The United States survived those periods of stupidity - not without major scars, but we came out of them still a democracy, as good as any the world has known. We might be able to do it again, but I'm not confident. The threats - the stupidity - seem to be coming from too many directions. Do "we" really want to live in a country run by a Hitler or a Mussolini? Do we really want an all-White nation, or at least one in which White is clearly superior and in charge, and all other colors are subservient slaves? I think we have to answer that question very quickly, or it will answer itself.
"Of course, we have another problem that we may not be able to correct, even if we do save our democracy. Many scientists - maybe, most - think we've already lost the battle with Climate Change - that there isn't anything we can do to stop it, or even slow it down. If there is still a chance, it has to involve something major, and immediate. It's too late to treat it as just some other issue the politicians need to address someday. Greg didn't think we had the will to save ourselves. I fear he was right.
I hope I'm not around to see very far into our future. I've done all I need to do. Two of the three people I love most are now gone, and it probably won't be long until only one of us is left. I think we gave our kids and grandkids all we had to give them, and - for better or worse - it's their world now. I'd like to just bow out, gracefully."
***
Vic died on November 20, 2023. There was no real cause, just the accumulation of a lot of little things not working as well as they used to. She wasn't "sick;" she just seemed to lose her power to move around for the last couple of days. She had lived 77 years, 4 months, and 14 days. We did have a full-fledged family gathering, with lots of photos and lots of story-telling.
After Vic was gone, there wasn't anyone left who had heard the Vic and Greg stories first-hand. However, I had heard the legendary ones many times, and I thought the kids should know them.
I told them about their first meeting, with Greg very hungover from a red wine drunk - the only time he was drunk in his whole life. She had "rescued" him with a pot of hot, strong coffee, and ended up sitting with him for the first of their many "front step" discussions.
I told them about her teaching him to back up a tractor with a trailer behind it. They didn't tell anyone for years that she had taught him, and his miraculous new skill became the refuge mystery of the mid-20th century.
I told them of the horned owl attack, when Greg probably saved her from serious injury from the owl's beak or talons. When they appeared covered with grass and leaves, her dad mistook the reason for their dishevelment, and almost did Greg bodily harm before they were able to explain. I told them how Vic was especially upset because she was afraid her dad would kill Greg before they'd had their first kiss!
I told them about the cabin by the ocean - the one they still used - and how its origin was in a dream that Greg had in Idaho years before. I told them about us finding the nearby headland, and how Greg was positive it was the exact place he'd seen in his dream. But I couldn't tell them what I was sure was a special secret that the place held, because nobody - except Mandy - ever knew what that secret was.
I told them other stories, as I remembered them. I hope it was enough for them to get a picture of what a marvelous creature their mother, and grandmother, was in her youth.
***
With Vic's passing, and with me nearing the completion of this history, I find I feel very lonely most of the time. It isn't a sad loneliness (although it has its moments!), but a nostalgic one. I feel like I'm really alone in the world, with just memories.
Of course, there are kids and grand-kids around me all the time. As always, some are even living here in the family house with me. (Right now, I think one is a Rafferty, and one is a Cleveland, but I'd have to check.) I love them, and they love me, and cater a lot to my needs. (One, a girl named Becky - who I think is my granddaughter - she calls me grandpa - is a very good cook, and takes very good care of me in that department.) But, just as I can't really know how these "youngsters" look at their lives - past, present, and future - there's very little in my life that they have experienced, or can even relate to.
We four - me, Mandy, Vic, and Greg - saw more changes in our lifetimes than any other generation. I know everybody who lives more than a few decades sees a lot of differences, but I'm talking about major changes. We were conceived in the last days of a "world war," one that really did involve much of the world, and that changed human future forever. Our early years were lived amidst two more long wars - not fought on American soil, but affecting almost everyone we knew in some way, and having major effects on the Nation's morale. (The generations that have followed us constantly hear about war, but no war has touched most of them personally.)
In our youths, automobiles and airplanes had already grown beyond novelty, but they were still a long way from necessity. Although some color movies had been produced years before, almost everything we saw on the "big screen" in the late 1950s was filmed in black-and-white. A family television set was still a rarity in the mid-1950s, and color broadcasts didn't begin in earnest until 1965. Electric typewriters weren't common in business offices until the 1950s. There are still some around, but almost all - for both business and personal use - had succumbed to the computer by the 1990s.
The personal computer, found in almost every household in every country - I'm using mine, right now - wasn't common even in offices before 1990. Pocket-sized cell phones were seldom seen before 2000, and it was another 10 or 15 years before you could reliably send and receive calls from almost anywhere. The Internet - how did we ever live without it? - was still very primitive in the U. S. in 1990, and was unavailable in most of the world. The worldwide internet we have today didn't exist 15 years ago.
I bring all this up just to try to explain the roots of my loneliness. It's the result of a major experience gap. Our grand-kids have never lived in a world without "smart phones" and the Internet. How can I explain any of my experiences to them?
So, what do I do now? I'm almost 83 years old. Growing up, I'm sure I thought people didn't really live this long. Of course, we do. Check your newspaper any day, and you'll see many records of men and women who have lived into their '90s, and even beyond. I seem to be in good health for my age, and I'm not showing any signs of dementia (the only disease that has ever worried me). I could be one of those long-lived ones. I hope I'm not.
I think I've done everything I ever wanted to do (or am capable of doing). During the Covid lockdown, we spent quite a bit of time getting together photos and family papers that someone might want some day. My "estate planning" is to the point that life after my demise should be pretty straightforward for our "kids." Besides, it isn't just Mandy, Vic and Greg who are gone, now. Almost everybody of "our" generation that I knew is deceased, also. John Donne said that no man is an island. I wasn't, but I kind of am, now.
I'll hang on. Like Vic, I'm not a quitter. I can keep myself busy with my reading and writing and thinking. I'm just saying that I won't regret going, although I would very much prefer skipping over any long illnesses.
You might ask what I think about "the afterlife." You may remember what Mandy said to me about "memories" - if she had any, she wanted them to be of our last time together. We four felt that the only return we'd be interested in would be one that had us all together again, just as we were, and with a full memory of our earlier existence. None of the other mentioned outcomes resonated with any of us. Since the general consensus seems to be that we wouldn't remember our past lives, anyway - no matter what our new ones were like - "ashes to ashes, dust to dust" is as good an ending as any other.
If there's Something - or nothing - ahead, we don't have anything to say about it, do we? As far as preparing for an afterlife - if there is any "preparing" that could be done - I guess I will fall back on my penchant to quote something I read or heard. In 1882, Robert Ingersoll recited an essay he entitled “Creed.” Thomas Alva Edison recorded it. Here's a part of it:
"While I am opposed to all orthodox creeds, I have a creed myself; and my creed is this. Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so. This creed is somewhat short, but it is long enough for this life, strong enough for this world. If there is another world, when we get there we can make another creed.”
I know that all four of us - Mandy, Vic, Greg, me - subscribed to that creed.
***
Chuck (Mandy's and Vic's father) once told us a story about a football game played by their alma mater. I can't find any record of such a game. Chuck may have mis-remembered some of the details.
Anyway, as he told the story, it was the final game of the season. Their team had a "good" record, but the visitors were all big, burly farm boys who hadn't lost a game in two seasons. It was a formidable challenge, but it was lovely football weather (by North Dakotan standards) - temperature around zero, with light snow falling - and everybody expected to thoroughly enjoy the game.
There was a lot of scoring, with the home team holding its own, and the game was tied at the end of regulation play. Those were the days when "overtime" meant you kept playing until somebody won (not these silly present-day, see if you can score from the 20-yard line, playoffs). They did keep playing until it was too dark to see the football. The score was still tied, so they decided to finish the game on Sunday.
Sunday was even a nicer day for football - temperature minus 20, snow falling heavily, and a blizzard warning posted for later. As great as the day way, Chuck and Alice decided - they would listen to the game on the radio. They got some snacks, turned on the radio, and wrapped themselves up in a big blanket on the couch. The game was just starting.
Feeling a little drowsy, and not wanting to fall asleep, he suggested to Alice that they do a little warm-up lip touching exercise that they both liked. They tried it, then Alice suggested that a little hand moving under the blanket might increase their circulation. They tried that.
The newspaper report was that the football game had lasted another two hours, then the home team won with a "miracle play." Alice and Chuck had missed it, being involved at the time in making a miracle of their own. A year later, impressed by their first success, they tried for - and produced - a second miracle. They named the miracles Victoria and Amanda.
And that's the way this story began
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