Good-Bye

This has been a brutal week.

Nate, one of the main characters on Six Feet Under, dead.  I haven't yet seen the past three episodes, all of which apparently shudder under the weight of his sudden demise, but I've been reading about them and will probably be able to pick up a tape tomorrow.  Fiction -- yes, of course,  But those of us obsessed with Six Feet Under and its exploration of death and life know exactly what our English teachers meant when they stressed the value of fictional expression.  (Oh, wait -- sometimes I AM an English teacher; I SHOULD know that, right?)

Twenty Marines from a local unit killed in Iraq.  A seemingly endless series of newspaper articles featuring the faces of very young men and their distraught families.  I am listening to the televised community memorial service as I write.

Kat's sister and nephew, killed in a horrific accident last week and eulogized today.

An elderly friend of mine, husband to a former boss, sort of a Peter Jennings of our locale -- someone whose childhood seemed an unlikely launching pad toward greatness, yet one of the most debonair, brilliant, and modest gentlemen in the city, a man whose contributions to his profession and his adopted hometown are immeasurable.  At least he, at 85, could lay claim to a long and productive life.

And now Mr. Jennings himself.  ABC World News has been my evening news for years.  When he announced his lung cancer diagnosis, two weeks after my stepmother died of the same disease, with a treatment plan that sounded suspiciously like the one she had been encouraged to follow,  I knew that his prognosis had to be dismal.  Several times in recent weeks I've wondered how he was doing.  Now we all know.

I suppose it seems odd that I would have started my litany with Nate Fisher, despite the fact that, chronologically speaking, he died first.  Of course, he didn't really die, any more than Hamlet dies, over and over and over, reminding the audience of the torment that all the real-life stricken survivors must endure.

May all those really gone tonight rest gently and in peace.