I Hate This Blog

Henrik Mayer Hansen
May 24, 1904 - May 28, 2005

photo: Huntington Beach, Bay Village. June, 1972

Only fitting that Henrik (my brother) should give me the news. I was trying to get a call through this morning while my folks were notifying him. And so he called me.

We talked. I talked to Dad. It's always the same with us; the question, "How are you doing?" is inevitably met with the response, "oh, I'm fine," and then a prolonged recitation on what is currently happening, and not what we feel.

"Oh, I'm fine, we just got back from church and later some people are coming over, we're hoping to get outside while it's still sunny ..." And so on.

Actually, Henrik and I made metatextual references to the fact that we were aware we were doing exactly that, and then did a respectably decent job of actually adressing some real emotions. The word "guilt" was used a lot. Then we talked about movies.

I do not know what I am feeling, honestly. I keep remembering he died last night and then I remember that I don't feel as strongly about that as I guess I think I should. How much can you grieve for a man whose death you had been waiting for - not the way you wait for a present, but more the way you wait for an impending rainstorm - I mean, let's face it, he was 101 years old.

I got to tell him he had a new great-grandson, and that was wonderful. He even got to see pictures and Mom read him a letter I had written for his birthday. And he had that birthday. It was so nice seeing him last year when he turned 100. Every year, fewer visitors. Fewer and fewer people alive who knew you ever lived.

A lifespan should be so much longer than your own life. Since birth (1935) my mother has been called Tertia - the third - by her parents, her brothers, their families and so by my cousins and their kids, and now by Zelda. That Zelda calls her this gives my mother happiness because when she is gone someone will still be remembering her, using that name, for a long time.

What's amusing, I guess is that the only people who don't call her that is her husband or her sons. For the longest time I thought Tertia was simply short for Virginia, which I wouldn't call her, anyway.

There will be grief, even if it is mild. I was surprised by the sadness I felt, the vacancy, the first time I returned to Athens and Toni's grandfather Calvin wasn't there. I knew the last time we visited Grandfather Henrik that it would, in all likelihood, be the final time. Will I ever have occasion to see St. Petersburg, Florida again? That same little apartment that my grandfather (and before that, he and Grandmother Helen, together) lived in for almost thirty years?

And why the hell is it that places fill me with greater melancholy than people do?

Now where am I? I am at the end of so many things. The school year is over. The son is born. The grandfather is dead. I do not know what I will do this summer, there are no road trips, no performances, my heel is broken and I cannot run, and on top of all this, I have no clear indication by my employer as to exactly what I am going to be doing for them during the next three months.

I am in a place of great stillness. Perhaps I should be enjoying this.

Happy Memorial Day Weekend, everyone.