Howling

La Principesa, Sasha Kinens

I've been learning lately that death is a quotidian waltz. I am attending a funeral today for a relation I haven't seen in years. I will say goodbye to him, to his mother who I will likely never see again, to his sisters who I might only see on a Manhattan street, to my family when I was a child. Would they know me in a crowd at dusk? Were I still ten years old, yes. I will tell them I am getting married, I will think of my grandmother in her arm chair, my grandfather living only to say the blessing over the challah, the house we all once lived in, the desk, the paintings, our cat who has gone. I will think of my dog, my cat, the man who will be my husband, our apartment, the family we will have, and I will never understand that he will never know what made me before I was the person he loved.