Birds Hold Funerals for Their Dead The birds gather around their fallen friend and sing to such a degree that the din gathers more birds, who then sing and in turn gather more. After the funeral ceremony the birds avoid foraging in the area around t…

Birds Hold Funerals for Their Dead

The birds gather around their fallen friend and sing to such a degree that the din gathers more birds, who then sing and in turn gather more. After the funeral ceremony the birds avoid foraging in the area around the deceased bird for at least 24 hours.

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"When she was old I asked my grandmother how she stayed so young. She said, ‘I only hung out with young people.’ So that’s why we are friends…When you start to feel like you’re getting old, just spend more time with people who make you remember you’re not."
- my iced tea date with Ida, May 2011

Ida Webster changed me forever.

Glass Jars

Yesterday I was carrying one of those big glass beer growlers. It was empty. I had just washed it. I had it in my hand, my finger was in the loop handle. I was thinking about what I was going to do next; I didn’t even think about how I might drop it.

But it slipped right off my finger, it hit the floor and broke into what seemed like 8 million slivers of glass, all over my living room, right at my feet.

After the obsessive clean up, Allen said, “Isn’t this a metaphor of our lives this summer. We don’t even question our ability to carry something. Then it just slips out of our hands and breaks into 8 million slivers.”

No one ever wishes this kind of accident would happen (dropping a glass jar). But after it was all done, I realized it was kind of cathartic for the reason Allen articulated. The visual person that I am, it was kind of helpful to see a glass jar explode — almost in slow motion — and in a nano-second be able to think, “I can’t do anything about this. It’s happening. All I can do it clean up the pieces” and just watch it happen.

Life is frail. One second we are carrying something, and the next second we’re not.

Our friend Ian is dead. He will always be dead. That’s pretty much all I know for sure regarding his death. We picked up as many pieces as we could. And we’ll keep finding slivers in our feet for a lot of years, probably when we least expect it.