the Roulette Wheel

 the Roulette Wheel



     It does seem ironic that Greg and I discussed death a lot, even in our salad days when we were just playing with the concept of mortality. We got a little more serious in 1992 when we saw our father's close their mortal accounts. Then the thunderbolt of Ed Carroll's untimely death in 2007 really gave us pause and increased our imagining of what this would be like to just cease being. Greg used to say it was simply "the cessation of sensation" but behind that sentence are gallons of tears, wails of despair and countless hours of paralyzing sorrow. We move forward in life holding onto one another and when that grip loosens the challenge to continue can be terrible. Over all the years there was one concept we shared however and that was the great roulette wheel of life. This was no "wheel of fortune" where we might win an outboard motor boat but the possibility of greeting the new day with a forboding impairment. It might be a troubled stomach, an itching mole on the neck or a slight headache that will not go away. Every single blessed day as Greg's second favorite song-writer Stevie Sondheim wrote was the point to finding the roulette wheel landing on a space that gave you life for a day more. We arise to the Southern California sun day after day and take for granted this gift of being. The sentence seems corny but we could be corny to eachother because we felt too weak to say it to the world. The roulette wheel motif can be used to describe many aspects or aging as I have discovered. Some mornings you wake up and your hip aches, sometimes your ears are clogged, another spin and you have a bad tooth or a balky prostate. Greg used to harken back to the last words of FDR who said  “I have a terrific pain in the back of my head.” or George Sanders who wrote "I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool." The plain and simple truth was that Greg and I were celebrating our good fortune just having enough vitality without that much suffering or pain. One day he spun the wheel and his doctor told him he did not like his liver numbers. Fuck!  I continue to spin the wheel with my fingers crossed as my dear ones fall right and left in my wake. I hate that part of mortality but the living on part is pretty swell, comparitively. It is hard for me to write the words but the last words Greg spoke to me on earth in the presence of Michael Sheehy was "I"m fucked!"  He said it  twice and without even thinking about it Mike and I kind of mumbled "I know"

Not a day goes by
Not a single day
But you're somewhere a part of my life
And it looks like you'll stay

As the days go by
I keep thinking, when will it end?
Where's the day I'll have started forgetting?

But I just go on
Thinking and sweating
And cursing and crying
And turning and reaching
And waking and dying
And no
Not a day goes by
Not a blessed day
But you're still somehow part of my life
And you won't go away

So there's hell to pay
And until I die
I'll die day after day
After day after day
After day after day

After day

   


           

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