{"id":10646,"date":"2018-04-06T19:16:35","date_gmt":"2018-04-06T23:16:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=10646"},"modified":"2018-04-06T19:16:35","modified_gmt":"2018-04-06T23:16:35","slug":"the-shadow-of-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=10646","title":{"rendered":"The shadow of death"},"content":{"rendered":"

Had a strange phone conversation<\/strong> last night. It wasn\u2019t as grim as that summary might suggest \u2013 it just had a sort of black humor quality.<\/p>\n

One of my cousins died recently \u2013 much too young; sad story. Shortly after her death, I had a call from her brother, who wanted to talk, and I was happy to offer a shoulder. He was also concerned that he hadn\u2019t been able to reach our last surviving mutual uncle. Uncle O_____ has had some health problems recently, and my cousin couldn\u2019t find a number for him that worked. I promised I\u2019d call him myself, since I\u2019ve been in pretty regular communication with him, until recently.<\/p>\n

I tried calling, and the numbers I had didn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n

After the funeral, my cousin called again, and I told him about my failure. My cousin suggested I go through Facebook (which he doesn\u2019t use anymore), messaging O____\u2019s grandchildren. I tried that and broke through. They said they\u2019d pass the news on.<\/p>\n

So last night O____ and his wife called me. Apologized for losing touch \u2013 they\u2019ve been going through a difficult time of selling a house and relocating, on top of health issues.<\/p>\n

Then we started catching up. There was a lot of catching up to do. <\/p>\n

\u201cHow\u2019s L_________?\u201d O_____ asks, referring to a cousin of his. <\/p>\n

\u201cOh,\u201d I said. \u201cI thought you knew about that. She died. A couple years ago, as I recall.\u201d<\/p>\n

A little later he asked, \u201cWhat about J_______?\u201d Another of his cousins.<\/p>\n

\u201cI meant to tell you about that,\u201d I said. \u201cHe died around Christmas.\u201d<\/p>\n

When you get to a certain age, pretty much all news is bad news.<\/p>\n

And today I got to thinking about that, in relation to the writing I used to do for The American Spectator Online<\/a>. It\u2019s been a long time since they published one of mine, and it\u2019s not because they\u2019ve blacklisted me or anything. The editor has always been very complimentary about my writing, and I know anything I send them will probably be welcome.<\/p>\n

And I\u2019ve tried to write them something. I started two or three essays in the last six months or so, but somehow they never came to anything. Some I finished, some I didn\u2019t, but they ultimately just didn\u2019t seem to work.<\/p>\n

I think maybe it\u2019s because I\u2019m getting to a certain age, and pretty much all news is bad news.<\/p>\n

I can still tell parables and make arguments, but how do you convince people who don\u2019t believe in reason? Who consider logic a tool of white male oppression?<\/p>\n

And now I\u2019m not sure how to end this post. Ultimately it just doesn\u2019t seem to work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Had a strange phone conversation last night. It wasn\u2019t as grim as that summary might suggest \u2013 it just had a sort of black humor quality. One of my cousins died recently \u2013 much too young; sad story. Shortly after her death, I had a call from her brother, who wanted to talk, and I … Continue reading The shadow of death<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[709,2776],"class_list":["post-10646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-death","tag-the-american-spectator-online"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10646\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}