REQUIEM

It is the last day of this year leaving a few hours to wrap up the goodbye and jump both feet into the New Year. There is something empowering about new beginnings where the best you can say about endings is that hopefully, the letting go doesn’t hurt very much. My New Year resolutions have been more wishful thinking than commitments but it certainly is about forward leaning-anticipating. But I like reflections too. Stories don’t hatch in a vacuum, not without a seed. My resolutions for 2018 will be shallow, easily modified as need be. Low expectations improve the probability of success. 

The Unitarian Church of Baton Rouge is a modern, red brick building under live oak trees on Goodwood Blvd. They have a tradition there for the last Sunday in December. The program is called “Requiem”. On Requiem Sunday both the minister and the choir take the day off as the service is in the hands of a committee. They've been preparing all year. If anything is as fundamental to us as birth, it is death. Every year, people who leave a legacy of what is good and to what we would aspire, some of them run out of days, just like the old year. So today at church we listened to their music or note their contributions to the arts, to literature and service to others. 

This time a year ago, nobody knew who would pass from us but preparation had to begin. Musicians were lined up to sing and play, not knowing any of the details. Readers without scripts agreed to fill spots. The 2017 program began with Tom Petty, rocker supreme. Popularity was one thing but the way his lyrics mirrored his life was another: “Well I know what’s right, I got just one life, In a world that keeps on pushin’ me around, But I’ll stand my ground.” Then it was tribute to Mary Tyler Moore and her work not only as an actress but a producer, film maker and author, on the front edge of women breaking the glass ceiling and a fledgling women's movement. Jerry Lewis was Dean Martin’s wacky sidekick but remembered more for fund raising against childhood disease; he died in 2017 too. They went on from Glen Campbell to Della Reese, Fats Domino and Chuck Berry. 

When the program ran out of time, just like an old year, we found ourselves reflecting on what we could still hang onto and what had slipped out of reach. It’s been 50 years since the group “Blood Sweat & Tears” recorded, “When I Die” but the message still moves me. “And when I die, and when I’m dead, dead and gone: there’ll be one child born and a world to carry on.” I think that’s the bottom line. This life doesn’t transition, year to year. It slides through our fingers moment by moment and if we try to digest it in bigger bites, the good stuff can get lost between headlines. Tonight I’ll be at Snug Harbor, a jazz club-restaurant on Frenchmen Street in New Orleans, just a few blocks off the French Quarter. Food and music will be great and I keep only the best company. We will be home before midnight and I’ll sleep well, wake up a few hours later, next year.