I’m quite glad a fellow informed me that he was an friend of my old friend Noreen and I was able to give him appropriate credit for his finely written obit. He’s not Alden Whitman, but I’m sure Noreen would have appreciated the piece he wrote.
Death, or reminders of same, always gets me to thinking that I am probably on the “shank” of my life.
Thinking about my life disturbs me a bit. I’m never certain whether I’ve led a “good” life, a “bad” life, or simply just a “life.”
I’ve done many things, but for the life of me, I can think nothing exemplary, save raising my two boys as a single parent and sole custodian. They worked out quite well.
My tendancy these days is to consider the basest of things that have occurred, many of them discussed on this blog. For some of them, there’s no question of my responsibility; others, well, definitely another’s blame and some I just can figure out.
My first wife, for example, brought in my two grand boys. That’s really about the only thing she did, though she was more than just modestly intelligent, but in a dilatantish way. Frankly, I thought I divorced her because I was in love with “Maggie.”
And, damn, Maggie was in my life for at least 20 years on and off and nothing ever came of it. Now while that first divorce was certainly on me, the loss of Maggie is probably on her. Briefly, and forgetting about the fact that she was drunk and caught me with a kitchen knife just above my left testicle in a small town in Northern Italy, Monterchi (I put a old kitchen sponge on the wound and walked a quarter mile into town to see the only doctor – a vet, who handled it well for less than five dollars).
Maggie, if you’ve read this blog, never worked out, though somewhere in my head I have recurring thoughts that she may have been the only woman I ever truly loved.
I smoke cigarettes, and cigars…but I wonder if they’ll kill me or shorten my life. The doc hasn’t seen any signs, but what the hell…the world may come to an end before I go anyway.
War: I’ve seen war: Three times, once in the Middle East and twice in Southeast Asia. Suffice it to say, it’s far worse than in the movies. I don’t like it, for any reason.
My current wife, as I may have said, has become a pain in the a**. I wonder if I’m too old for divorce. Alimony’s not a question. I think, at times, divorce would be a catalyst for a new adventure; perhaps simply moving abroad. My choice would be Eze or Nice, though Marseilles would be grand were it not a port city and filled with challenges.
There was another M in my life…she was full of herself because she was an attorney. Went to a second tier law school but sort of did alright. She liked Washington “brunches” which where a pain in the neck and always filled with spinach salad which I abhor. Went over to her house on a Sunday morning to pick her to go a museum and she was lying in bed with another fellow reading the NY Times. Both were fully clothed, but somehow it bothered me and I went to a relationship reporter at AP.
Then there was my second wife who was a math whiz and worked for IBM…however, she got involved with the “New Age,” and some guru out of Florida. Her attendance at his seminars cost me more than alimony…and she found a “cat psychiatrist” who cost me $80 an hour to determine what was wrong with our cat, who was 17. His conclusion, “He’s old and reliving his past.”
There was a girl at the school at which I met Noreen, Gail was her name. We were quite involved for a time and I travelled to Miami on vacations to spend time at her house. Another irony: Her older sister, a therpist down there, is one of my closest friends today. Have not heard from Gail, with whom I used to sleep.
So, what else is new? Nothing…and I’m now posting something simply for the discipline of writing.
