The Ultimate Change

AUGUST, at least to me, has always been this interim, this hiatus, those three dots on a story-page indicating time is about to pass/ is passing/ has passed. August augurs Change, count on it! screamed my every nerve. Not every Change proved to be to my liking.

AN AUGUST BREAK-UP OF CAMP? Never mind my cabin mates had been the most boring (and/or sociopathic) jerks at camp. I cried for the end of bonfires and ghost stories and 'Smores.

THE RITUAL BACK TO SCHOOL SHOPPING-FOR-CLOTHES WITH MY MOTHER? A shopping trip featured scrumptious department store lunch, then followed by the worst carbohydrate crash in history featuring headache and nasty fights with my ma in dressing rooms smaller than that legendary space in which to swing a cat and washed in the sickening saffron of low-wattage bulbs. My mother in fact, had terrific taste, and I -- a clothes-lover doubtless by virtue of our common DNA -- grew to love most clothes she bought me.

THROUGHOUT THIS AUGUST I have attended a record number of memorial services and wakes and funerals of my near and dear. Plus, this past Saturday, I watched (all of)Teddy Kennedy's memorial service on MSNBC. And, of course my own(old) body/mind is much taken up with its (my) mortality. The Ultimate Change is not that far off, it whispers to itself,i.e., me as I drop off to sleep. But I am long past childish fears of dying. And fears of August, for that matter,

I have not chosen any Bible verse to be said at my memorial service (in my family, we are first cremated), and I have yet to pick out appropriate hymns. I would like my ashes scattered in the gardens of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine -- I can see its spires from the kitchen window and living room windows of my apartment and Charles and I were married there in 1977. Although I am not sure that ash-scattering in the Cathedral Close is all that legal.).

NOTE: I am actually in great health. I cannot promise you a royal sendoff of me any time soon