Seattle Loser

The phone call that woke me from the rather pleasant midday sleep I was enjoying in my recliner came from no less than the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.  I'll be brief, the caller said.  Fully present in the way one can only be after an adequate nap, I responded even more briefly.  I am not giving any donations since the recent death of my wife.  Oh, I'm so sorry, and the guy was gone.  The most splendid of causes, doubtless, but that was hardly the point.  The point, or finding it, is the point these days.  Which would strongly incline one toward appreciating the worthiness of rabbinical education, and even tilt one's personal coin box in that direction, if one was making sense.  Which one isn't.  No one is.  After the reconstructionist-rabbinical fundraiser was off the line, I could only ponder his hasty exit.  My wife died, oh I'm so sorry, click.  Really, this could be a conversation opener as easily as anything.  Oh, your wife died, and are you considering a memorial gift, etc.?  Proving that whatever you do for the bereaved is wrong.  Pursue memorial gifts and you're insensitive.  Hang up quickly and you make the bereaved a pariah.  Lose lose.

Which is entirely appropriate, because it's all about loss, isn't it?  Loss and losing and being a loser.  And, no, don't argue about the latter.  I cannot lose someone and not be a loser.  The matter is irrefutable, definitional.  As for losing in the competitive sense...well, that's a poser.  Everything in American life is competitive.  There's no reason why death should be exempt.  That's why one has to continuously talk oneself back or down or sideways...into sanity.  Particularly if oneself is me.  I am a loser in that I have lost.  As for my competitive standing, I have stayed in the game much longer than predicted.

I let myself in for a staggering amount of travel this summer.  Each trip seems like a monumental strain.  But once underway, the journey is what it is.  You start here, you end there and in between you tire.  Honestly, it's no worse than life.  Bon voyage.  Meet me in Seattle.