Ode to Bed

What I’ve been meaning to say was that the beach was beautiful on Friday. The fog burned off about 200 or so yards off shore and while it was sunny, clear and mild on the beach, I spied the fishing boats shroud in a haze of crisp fog further out. Just brilliant.

Saturday we went to the funeral service, burial and reception for Ed’s second cousin (his mother’s cousin.) His mother was close with this family as they retrieved her from the orphanage after her father was killed in the war and her mother couldn’t manage being a single parent working full time. From what I’ve gathered she spent her weekends with her mother and weekdays with relatives after the stint in the orphanage. Any rate, this man was more like an uncle to Ed given his mother’s relationship. An Irish police officer and later a sheriff, the ceremony was all you’d expect with Irish prayer and proverb scattered in among the traditional Catholic Mass, honor guard, bag pipes at the burial site and a whole lot of libations. (He’d never arrested someone for drinking and driving because he didn’t view it as crime. The closest he came, his brother, who was on a drunk driving task force, told the story, was when a neighbor nearly hit his patrol car whilst careening through a red light at an intersection. His fellow officer drove the neighbor’s car home and they handcuffed him to his bed – releasing him after their shift was over.)

A different era. He was a member of the Elk’s Club. The woman who sat next to me at the reception said, “Oh they threw the best parties, the Elks. Bands inside and outside. Once I smoked a cigar at one of those parties. We were drinking and bands were playing and someone passed around a cigar. When we got home my husband said that the cigar was taking things a little too far.” And she laughed (may he rest in peace.) Somehow a more innocent time. A cigar taking things a little too far. Oh for our vices to be so benign.

On our way home we bought a new bed, again paying more then I’d planned or budgeted. (At some point the spending just has to stop, but it feels like it hasn’t even wholly begun.) I’ve had this old bed for some fifteen plus years and while it served me well as the best bed in the world, now that it sags and we roll into the middle it’s startling to think it once deserved that title.

A different era. The lovers that found grace in those sheets - quiet moments, forgetful moments. Ah. I have no sadness in shaking off the past. Sometimes I wish it would disappear with all its trinkets and baubles. Other times I cling to it like a life raft. What is it about ghosts that sit with us more steadfast then our closest living friends? It’s like once you die or fade into the past you become the house guest that won’t leave. That old bed is too crowded anyways.