My wife, Leona, who was a peach but complicated, very very complicated, died recently, and my whole family and her whole family actually got into what the newspaper called “a rumble” at the post-funeral smorgasbord.
Here is what happened: One group around the punch bowl, I’ll call them My Group, made a toast to Leona that included the phrase, “Has passed on to a better place among the choir of angels.” The other group, which I’m going to call My Wife’s Group, also standing around the punch bowl, made a toast to Leona that included the phrase, “Has left the building and ain’t a-comin’ back.”
Then a bunch of people shouted out, “Death is a loss to be mourned!” and another bunch of people shouted out, “Death is a life to be celebrated!” which is when my college roommate leaped upon the shoulders of my wife’s father, a former featherweight boxer, and fairly soon I would have to say order fell apart. The police came and mourners got a total of 63 stitches, mostly from the frantic swinging of candlesticks.
My question is, who’s right? Is death something to be celebrated, or is death something to be mourned?
Yours Truly,
Lawrence from Leverett
This is an easy one. The answer is both.
Leave all weaponry such as candlesticks at the door. Love wildly. Mourn wildly. There are no pleasures better disguised as agonies than the pleasures that come with love and death. You get to cry more. You get to be held more. You get to be patted more. You get to sit around doing nothing but being handed things more while you review the glossiness of your life.
And later, everybody goes home with a reminder of how nice it is to love people and to be loved by people and to be held by people and to miss people.
Enjoy!
Your Fan,
Waldo Mellon
In one of your columns somebody asked you what to say to a kid who asked, What is love? Here was your idiotic answer: “Putting love into words is like putting rose petals into a chipper. The heart rattles, the soul shakes, and for what? Out comes pink goo.”
Pink goo? Thanks for nothing, Waldo. That’s a pile of brown goo if I ever smelled one. Help the poor kid out for crying out loud or find yourself another line of work. Thanks but no thanks.
Ima Nottafann
With colorful, albeit slightly disgusting imagery you make a genuinely interesting point and so please let me try to improve upon my Pink Goo Theory by shouting to the universe three big bulletins that I’m hoping will help give shape to that slippery self-absorbed shape-shifter, Love.
The first thing I’d like to shout is this: LOVE IS NOT SEXUAL. You heard me right. Sure, sex turbo-charges love, but it is no more essential to love than, say, a good shine is essential to comfortable shoes.
My second big bulletin, which I’m going to say more softly because it’s a gentler notion, is this: Love is the feeling you get when another living thing convinces you that you are allies in the struggle to be hopeful and kind. (Ima, I’m guessing that you are raising your cupped hands to your mouth so you can do some booing, but please hear me out.)
Consider what happens if you believe these two things to be true. Love is set free. Love is no longer tethered to romance or sex or time. With this mindset, all you have to do is sit on a park bench and watch the world go by, pleasantly scanning for allies. Or you may be at a restaurant with your partner celebrating your 50th wedding anniversary and you may look into each other’s eyes and tears may come and then when the bill is presented the two of you may share a flash of love for this engaging young waitperson. With this mindset, love is everywhere.
Which brings me to my third big bulletin, which I’ve again decided to shout: “LOVE” IS NOT “IN LOVE.” No, “love” and “in love” are two very different things thanks to S E X, a huge and lovely nightmare of pleasures that complicates everything, and I do mean everything, which shall be saved as a topic for another day.
Ima, I’m hoping that you may find something in this, and that you will accept my gratitude for shoving me forward and that before you fall asleep one night you will perhaps rethink the word “idiotic.”
Your Fan,
Waldomellon
Waldo’s Thought Trough: We all just want to be comfy. For things to improve, everyone who is comfy has to become less comfy so that those who aren’t comfy can become more comfy.
Have a question? The realer the better. Send it to waldomellon1@gmail.com. Waldo is the author of the book, “What’s What and What To Do About It” (Seven Stories Press).