Thoughts Meander

Among the nicer aspects of retirement is doing things on your own schedule (unless you're married then you do them on your significant other's schedule) to include reading the daily newspaper seated at my kitchen table instead of online while at my computer, 

That means I read everything to include the obituaries. Suspect if you read them, you feel the same way sometimes: I'm always impressed with how long so many people live these days (and hope I and everyone I know and love will be in that number for quite some time to come). Many days the paper has folks passing who were in their nineties and all of their families were far away if listed at all. That so many have so few makes me wonder if the parents have outlived their children and I suspect they have. 

Not sure why but that got me thinking back to something from a long time ago in the third or fourth grade at Saint Peter's School in New Brunswick, New Jersey with Sister Thomas Ann. 

What happens to you, I asked her when the last person on Earth who knew of you during your life dies as well after your death? I don't recall thinking I'd nailed anything to the cathedral doors in Wittenburg (I'm pretty sure I didn't even know where or what that was at the time) but I found out when you ask questions like that you spend the afternoon in Sister Immaculata's office (she was the principal) and your mom gets a call at home and your father has to write a note, actually a letter, apologizing for your question even though, as I thought about those obits yesterday in the newspaper, for the life of me, I couldn't and didn't understand why I was sorry or for what. 

I have a smart phone-or said another way, my cell phone has a stupid owner. I can listen to music from a variety of sources. In this case, I listen to slacker as it augments the albums I've stored in the cloud (albums? I'm not sure that's what we call music anymore; but it's what old guys like me call it. As for cloud, well, nevermind). 

Sometimes life imitates art and in this case makes me promise to return the favor, which may disconcert some of those whom I pass on the street from now on. Through my headphones, came my favorite John Prine song-a song that if we could somehow adopt it as a second national anthem, or as the foundation for foreign policy, this planet might not find itself in the mess it so often seems to end up in and maybe one less person would die all alone in a world with over seven billion of us stepping on one another's toes. 

"So if you're walking down the street sometime, And spot some hollow ancient eyes, Please don't just pass 'em by and stare, As if you didn't care, Say "Hello in there, hello."
-bill kenny