September 20, 2019
Cokie Roberts died this week. I heard her speak once, three years ago, on a panel. She struck me then as a calm, poised, intelligent woman. A journalist, Cokie had been on the Washington scene for many years, beginning back in the day when there were statesmen in the Senate. Former Presidents Bush and Obama recognized her passing with words of praise, as did many in high places.
But here is what hit me: she was almost exactly a year younger than I am. She would have been 76 on her next birthday at the end of December. I will be 77 on January 3rd. And no one remarked on how young she was, how it was a shame that her life was cut short. Because it wasn’t, she had lived a respectable amount of time. As have I.
Also this week I received the news that two friends had been diagnosed with cancer. One was diagnosed with leukemia on Monday, and then the devastating news hit that he had died today. He was strong and vital, a man who skied and climbed mountains, just one year older than I.
Another friend on Monday told me she was fighting giant cell arteritis. It can cause blindness if not caught in time. It is a case of one’s cells going berserk, as with cancer, but it is an auto immune disease, associated with another auto immune condition poly myalgia rheumatica, which both my friend and I have.
Tomorrow is the first day of autumn, and the leaves are beginning to turn. In the afternoon I will be going to the memorial service of a friend who died of cancer in June. She was 62.
Time is passing.
Time is passing.
Here is one of my father’s favorite poems, by Gerald Manley Hopkins:
Spring and Fall
to a young child
Márgarét, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.