Loren's Birthday Comes Round

Maybe Loren is hiking in heaven. 

November 12.  My brother Loren's birthday has rolled around again.  He would have been 68. Who knows, he might have dreaded the passage of time. On the other hand, he most certainly would have been following the current entertainment circus known as the presidential campaign.  I'm not sure where he would have gone with it. I'm sure he'd like Bernie Sanders, his beliefs and values. He also had great respect for Hillary, and he would be happy to have a woman president.  We might have been in different camps, who knows, but it would have been lots of fun.  He'd have some great rants about the Republican candidates, too, that's for sure.   I miss that. I miss Loren.

Loren, Andy and Me, 2003
in Amsterdam.  Memories are made of this.

Some people tell me he's "in a better place."  I'm not sure but I hope they are right.  Our mom's cousin Bill Form is now with him, after 97 years, along with most of our families on both my grandparents' sides.  We the grandchildren and great grandchildren, and great, great, great grandchildren are still vibrant branches on the old family tree, but the top of the tree is bare.  That's why I want to believe in everlasting life, and reincarnation, and souls that live forever, in the way of Rumi and other mystic poets.

I hope Loren is hiking in heaven surrounded by his goddesses, in a beautiful natural environment, beyond global warming and the desecration of the earth he fought so tirelessly to protect. I hope Loren is in a peaceful and harmonious place without hate, guns, war and violence.

I think I may have seen a sign of Loren's presence when I was in Amsterdam recently, visiting my niece Kaaren, Jeff and their lovely 2-year-old son Parks with my sister Andy. We were walking over a canal, like we did together some 10 years ago. I saw a light behind a church steeple, and I wondered.  He might have been hiking in the hills of Sicily, too, because he embraced history and antiquity and studied those ancient times and places when God was a woman.

Sometimes I think Loren is hovering when I'm reading Mary Oliver, listening to Enya, watching basketball, or writing.  He was curious about everything so Loren is everywhere.  He is everywhere, and in my heart and soul, and he will always mean the world to me.

Here is a song for my beloved brother, a Mary Oliver poem I know he'd like because it's about nature in harmony and at peace with itself.

Song for Autumn

by Mary Oliver  

In the deep fall

     don't you imagine the leaves think how

comfortable it will be to touch

     the earth instead of the

 nothingness of air and the endless 

     freshets of wind? And don't you think

of the birds that will come--six, a dozen--to sleep

     inside their bodies? And don't you hear

the goldenrod whispering goodbye,

     the everlasting being crowned with the first

tuffets of snow?  The pond

     vanished, and the white field over which

the fox runs so quickly brings out

     its blue shadows.  And the wind pumps its

bellows.  And at evening especially,

     the piled firewood shifts a little,

longing to be on its way.