Memento Mori

The two days of All Hallows Eve and All Souls Days have long been days of passage between the living and the dead: to simulate the presence of the dead by evoking their images. Carpe diem is a common enough epigraph on grave markers; with the mindful “seize the day,” as time is passing. A grave marker in Wellfleet urges:

Seize the moments while they stay,
Seize them, use them,
Lest you lose them,
And lament the wasted day.

And I didn’t have time to waste yesterday. There was a lot to be done. When I was up at Sandwich Library returning books, I ran into a young Dorothy from Oz, clutching her candy bag and about to make a dash for The Dan'l Webster Inn for her next haul. I was admiring the figures on the Library lawn and couldn’t help but noticing the one from Century 21 featuring a fortune teller. I wondered if she was reading the cards to project when the market might be coming back onto more solid ground.

“Stumped by the current housing market? Me too.”

One thing I have coming up is a Memorial Mass for a dear friend who was like a father to me. I had to meet with the florist to discuss flowers for the altar and lectern, and when I saw a car at the chapel I knocked on the side door, finding a priest inside.

I asked permission to take a few quick photographs so the florist would have a sense of proportion for the arrangements. I'll be making some tiny autumnal swag pieces to go under each window. And if this picture is blurry? The priest was praying, and he was nice enough to let me in with my disruption, so *click* and gone.

”Death’s Bark Really Isn’t Worse Than It’s Bite”

The woman who’s husband had died just had her daughter and son-in-law visiting Texas, meeting with their relatives, and one thing they saw was her father’s gravemarker, which is unique as he was a member of the Woodmen of the World group. I had printed her out information on this organization, (still in existence,) as well as a website of these distinctive gravemarkers, (called tree stones,) scattered across the country. Since she knew I was on the run yesterday, I dropped the paperwork off in her Cape Cod Times delivery box…a box her husband would go to faithfully every morning to retrieve his newspaper. His other regular act was to put out his flag, and every evening at sunset, in it would come.

I climbed the hill to the cemetery next to Barnstable harbor, studying the flying skulls and lichen with markers so worn you could no longer read the text.

“They are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time:
after your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.”

I returned to a slate slab I’ve visited before: Colonel John Gorham. The entire time I stood over his resting place, copying this text, I kept hearing a loud creaking, like the door in an old home. It was the gnarled branch of a bent tree, with it’s branches rubbing together. Maybe it was the Colonel telling me this wasn't his good side.

Here Lyes The Body of the Honoured John Gorham, Esq.
CoLL of the Regiment and One of His Majesties Justices
Of the Piease in the County of Barnstable
Who Departed This Life Nov The 11th 1715
In the 65th Year of his Age
Here Lyes A Valiant Soldeir and a Saint
A Judge. A Justice. Whome No Vice could taint.
A Perfect Lover of His Countrys cause,
Their Lives, Religion, Properties and Laws.
Who in his Young, yea very Youthful years
Took up His Sword, with Philip and his Peers
And when that Prince, and his black Regiment,
Were all Subdued, He Could Not Be
Content To Take West But In the Rest.

The good Colonel’s wife joins him, as well, 20 years later:

Here Lyes Likewise Interred Beneath This Stone
Mary, Consort of the Late CoLL John Gorham,
Who Died April 1 1732. The Sweet Remembrance
Of the Just Shall Flourish When
They Sleep In The Dust.

I loved the “likewise.” Something very Bronx Tale about that. East Side Kids. “Yeah…Likewise. Yer mudder wears Army boots.” It was time to leave the dead and return to the living.

I decided to go see the children get candy from the merchants on Main Street in Hyannis. Driving over there, I realized it was the eve of my father’s death last year, and I remembered the suddenness and unexpectedness of the event, and the sadness of that day. I held his hand while I listened to the labored breath of the dying. I kissed his forehead. I told him that I felt his father and mother, brothers and sister would be waiting for him. That Mom would be waiting for him. I said all of the things you say to someone who is leaving the earth. I told him that he could go when he was ready. That I would be all right. Well….

Main Street was alive with people. The children, especially the tiniest ones, were so cute in their costumes. Everyone was in good spirits. I popped into Tim's Used Books to talk to the owner, browse around, watch the kids get their treats. We talked about Edward Gorey, bees, clouds, Edith Wharton. I bought a book entitled, Puritan Gravestone Art.

I had this little chick telling me “Trick or Treat,” then turning her head into her mother’s knee.

There were a lot of Spidermen. Skeletons. Transformers. And a lot of Pink Princesses.

“No Cotton Candy? It’s My Favorite. It’s….Spun.”

I still had floral arrangements to work on; things to do. I got back into my car to leave, turning onto Pearl from Main, and as I waited, a father crossed my path with his son. His son was crying. The father was screaming, “Grow up ALREADY! “ “Grow UP!”

Soon enough, Dad. Soon. Enough.

Where The Buoys Are Some Gulls Wait For Me

I was doing some research and writing for a friend, and I had stopped by to leave her my completed work at the end of our day. We considered future shared projects, but we also discussed how soup weather is settling in, and thus the appetite for soup fixed in my head. I went to the local Stop & Shop to see what I could find to satisfy that craving. I had been thinking about my mother in recent days and how we always had oyster stew on the darkest, wettest days of winter. For my family, that might mean a visit out to where the fishermen brought the oysters in as “step one” in soup making.

While I was shopping I glanced down the aisle that held pet products and saw dried dog food. My mother was very big on feeding birds, and for a time we had a large crow population that was inclusive in that mix. My mother would throw sticks at the crows to keep them from eating the pricier seed she had put out for her cardinals and goldfinches, but my argument was “birds are birds” and they should all be allowed at the plate. When the crow population hit its peak, (and it has since been decimated due to West Nile Virus more than anything else,) was when my mother figured out crows like eating dried dog food, and that it would immediately divert them away from the sunflower seed.

"If you take a dog which is starving and feed him
and make him prosperous, that dog will not bite you.
This is the primary difference between a dog and a man."
~~ Mark Twain

Last evening at twilight, I put on my heaviest sweater, boots and all-weather coat and went out to the shoreline with an eight pound bag of dried dog food to feed the seagulls. You don’t think seagulls eat dog food? Au contraire, you gourmands, you. I thought, “What’s good for the crows, is good for the gulls.” I know many think seagulls are nothing more than flying rodents, but for me…boids is boids.

At first I tossed food down by the waterline. There was one gull, obviously bigger than the rest. Let’s call him “Frank.” Frank had to be the leader of this little pack, and I watched as he tilted his head back to the sky, letting out this raucous cry, alerting the others that the “shape” had “food.” It isn’t often in nature that you witness an animal hold back in eating from an obvious food source. Usually it’s every creature for themselves, but I have seen this twice now in an animal population. Crows always wait until the group is gathered. I saw it last night again with the gulls. Not "mine, mine, mine" at all. Also, there was an obvious limit to this clan’s size. That surprised me, too. I thought birds would be coming from everywhere.

"This is my home. My country.
Frank Lucas don't run from nobody. This is America."

~~Frank Lucas in American Gangster

See Mr. Black and White on the left? Mr. Big. American Gangstah Gull. I think the others were calling him “Frank.” The first time I took a step…a slow step…they took off back over the water, but then flew back in. I stood very still for a while, and ultimately they were eating down by my feet.

"I'm in mourning for my life." ~~Anton Chekov, "The Seagull"

A week ago, I went to see a late movie, hadn’t really thought out dinner, and stopped by Tiki Port over in Hyannis for some hot and sour soup to go. They have the oddest habit of giving you rolls with your Chinese food, and the next morning I broke up the roll and fortune cookies for Frank and the gang. One fortune read, “It’s not the end yet. Let’s stay with it.” I figure that’s telling the birds at low tide to keep looking for that elusive golden clam. Another one was “Time to tie up those loose ends with beautiful bows.” Get serious and stop drifting on the thermals?

“The world was my oyster, but I used the wrong fork.”
~~Oscar Wilde

It was the strangest thing. They ate all of the food I tossed out, and then instead of going back to the waterline to seek more food, (which I would consider their normal behavior,) they started preening, fluffed out their feathers and lowered into the sand. Looked like nap time to me. I had a guest with me last weekend, and one night she queried, ““What do gulls do at night?” I mean, how would I know? I’m no gullthority. “Watch Letterman?” “Play cards and drink too much?” “Watch the Sox?” I said, “Uh…..sleep?”

Illustration from A Gull's Story