A Couple of Deaths and The Great Reset

A funeral in Ireland during the Covid-19 pandemic that required social distancing. Photo by AugusteBlanqui, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

A couple of deaths intruded into my life, and it took me a while to get myself together so I wouldn’t pen an insufferable introspective.

The first was my favorite band’s lead singer, David Longdon of Big Big Train. He had a voice quite like Peter Gabriel’s, and I like his era of Genesis music the best, so to have David Longdon doing magnificent vocals (soaring, belting, caressing, the whole range) with a group of musicians who understood the “rock” part of progressive rock was a special treat, generally speaking.

One of the primary features of the niche David Longdon filled was the passing of Merry Old England, the myths and legends that became the foundation of Victorian greatness, which then faded away slowly after her death, hastened by Hitler and Mahatma, even as the London fog which Victoria brought slowly dissipated. Coal-fired locomotives, in Longdon’s poetry, take you through it all, as ghosts might ride. He suffered a fall in November of 2021 and succumbed to his injuries. R.I.P.

There were some details in his obituary which were puzzling. I determined that the confusion arose from certain expressions in the English language which are no longer allowed, in an effort to give no unnecessary offense, so I thought I’d write about it, the confusion, that is, in a mammoth essay mourning the loss of distinction, but then my brother-in-law, my sister’s husband, contracted covid pneumonia. After I had completed the first draft of that essay, his condition became dire, and we set the death watch. He died on Christmas Eve of 2021, at 9:00 P.M. Art E., R.I.P.

One’s attention is turned outward.

We traveled from Buffalo to Chicago to mourn with my sister and bury her husband, but while we were along the way, we received news that one of his sons (from a previous marriage), also contracted covid pneumonia, and his condition was dire, so the funeral would be delayed several days. I took the family on a detour north into the boreal forests of Michigan, stopping at a pine forest, actually, a virgin forest which had not been hewn in the great denuding of Michigan in the 18^th and 19^th Centuries. Among the pines and birches are some fairly ancient beech trees, those smooth-barked giants of the east. On them are the marks of generations past, men who professed love for their women, carving the sentiment everlasting into the tree.

It was fairly cold that day, but upon descending into the forest we discovered that it was quite a bit warmer within. Decay, I reason. Indeed, it was warm enough to pack the snow into snowballs, which provided ammunition for a pitched battle, rousting road weariness.

On the road again, we encountered an early winter blizzard, so we found a place to stay in St. Joseph, Michigan. I made my way to Lake Michigan, like an idiot, to watch the lake’s very best waves. Sure enough, it was heaving under a driving storm, barely protesting against it, lashing out in obedience to the storm at everything we call civilization, but not with any power that anyone indoors noticed. The grocery store was empty, though, empty of people, I mean. In Michigan, and also other states, I am led to understand, grocery stores are allowed to purvey wine and liquor, a miracle of e pluribus unum, I suppose (such a thing is not allowed in New York State), saving me a trip.

The burial was blistering cold, like the Chicago I remember from the early 90s, so much colder than anything Buffalo has to offer. Snow blew into the grave, and then out again, peppering our faces while the promises were made and the Aaronic Benediction sealed it all. I made my way to Lake Michigan again, to see what the blizzard had wrought there: interesting stuff, in fact, the earth delivering a beating unto itself, turning over stones, plowing up beaches, and splitting rocks with water and cold, the old, unchanging processes.

Lake Michigan from north of Chicago

Art’s pastor had made some promises, see, unwisely. He himself, along with his family, had contracted covid earlier, in late November, and all of them recovered easily, so when Art contracted it, he confidently assured him and my sister that Art would be okay. The week of self-treatment turned into fear, and then the fear into a hospital visit, the visit into a hurried admission into the ICU, which added a layer of fear, and that stupid, stupid promise from a man who should have known better—this is not how the Christian faith functions­—there is the slightest anger adhering to Art’s death, a common, everyday occurrence in a great big unfeeling universe, soulless—but we are unable to distinguish, both in the sense that we are incapable of it, it seems, like a forgotten skill, and also that we are not allowed to distinguish—“you can’t do that; in fact, you mustn’t.”

One must reach into the more risible promises sealed with a benediction than, “Art will be okay; after all, I’m okay.” No self-respecting shaman of yesteryear would have ever risked his supper by something so obviously stupid. But here we are.

Upon returning to Buffalo, comforted by the Big Risible, I heard rumors of wars. The industrial prowess which makes a storm-lashed Lake Michigan a toothless Leviathan will surely hold. There is the lake; here is the beach, and upon the bluff, a great city. These things we can distinguish. Among the other powers of the world, I do not have any comfort that we are able to distinguish.

Nevertheless, it will all be okay.