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If You’re Lucky

     Everyone experiences grief (if you’re lucky)
                                   —Stephen Colbert

I’m certain that he didn’t originate this 

notion, but I just heard him say it (in that 

just off-kilter way) on a one of numerous

YouTube clips of him this week, this one by 

People magazine about the end of The Late 

Show.  My dad died less than a year after I 

moved to San Francisco, where I now happily 

reside.  He was 58, which is how old I will be

for around three more weeks, give or take
a day.  The way I remember it, the last thing
he said to me was I love you, Del.  And he did.
My little brother passed overnight in the cab

of his stationary pickup truck.  He was at my
Aunt Patti’s place in Missouri.  He was 47,
and it had been less than three years since
I got him to come visit me here in California.

It was the only time all four of us (me and my
siblings) were together at any one of the many
places I’ve lived since leaving home for college
back in 1985.  That visit had been (and still is) 

one of the happiest extended weekends of my 
life.  There were three great-grandparents, two
of whom I got to spend much time with and I
remember each vividly.  And all four of my 

lovely grandparents, each of whom I knew well
and with whom I had the great luxury of spending
countless hours.  My maternal grandmother,
Mabel Louise Van Meter, was among them.  She

was my chief inspiration for becoming a diarist
and a poet (and who most likely was the inspir
ation for any of the rare qualities I have that
a consensus might judge morally good).  There

have been others, like my pal Kim, with whom
I’d stay up talking nonstop, each of us mostly
over the voice of the other’s, well into the early

morning on so many nights during my first 20

years on the West Coast.  And there was Kevin, 

who of all of the long list of poets’ and artists’ 
contact info I’d been given by friends in Boston
before moving here to the Left Coast all those

years ago, was the first to respond to my shy 

ask once here.  He took me post haste to the 

Black Cat in North Beach to hear a couple of poets 

read, and he introduced me, I swear, to every 

one else who was in attendance.  But the death

that by far has hit me the hardest up to now has 

been that of Sepia the Cat, who was but 13.  She

had been with me for almost all of those years,

first in Jamaica Plain, then my first place here 

on Anza Vista, then to my studio on Bush Street,

and finally to the apartment at the corner of

Pine and Mason, on Nob Hill.  Having missed 

almost no day without her during most of her 

short but seemingly content life (and a signif

icant portion of mine), I can say that the pain 

of her passing hit me harder than I would 

have ever imagined.  It was stark and it was 

tangible.  So it seems that I have been one 

of the lucky ones.  And on that notion (and 

in general) I cannot but heartily concur.