Semi-colon

            For the third week in August we always rent a house and invite our children (and grandchildren!) to a Summer Retreat. This year David’s funeral was on Sunday and we drove to the house in the Catskills Monday afternoon. We hadn’t done much meal planning so when we got there I made a chart of who would be at each meal. Across the top of the page I listed names: Jim, Mary, R’el, Peter, Xiomara, Matt. I was stopped cold. For 27 years the name after Matt has been David (Davey when he was young, then DJ at school and Dave at home until he settled on David). Countless times I counted children to make sure they were all with me (and even then I lost a child occasionally). Even in this stage of life, with them all grown up and on their own, I sometimes speak the list when someone asks about our family. Bishop Bement, in his funeral talk, said that death was a comma, not an exclamation point. But in that list of mine, R’el, Peter, Matt…there’s a powerful semi-colon.

            We listened to Gustav Holst’s The Planets, for our monthly Johnston Family Book Group. Near the end of “Mars”, the first planet, there is loud, dissonant chord, played nine times with rests between each, then a final crash of a chord. Musically it’s just the end of a section, with Venus, the bringer of peace, and the joyful Jupiter to come, but to me the end of the chord opens up a steep ravine and I nearly fall into it every time.