CRAIG LANCASTER | Novelist. Editor. Traveler in the World.
  • Home
  • About
  • Books
    • And It Will Be a Beautiful Life
    • 600 Hours of Edward
    • The Summer Son
    • The Art of Departure
    • Edward Adrift
    • The Fallow Season of Hugo Hunter
    • This Is What I Want
    • Edward Unspooled
    • Julep Street
    • You, Me & Mr. Blue Sky
    • Dreaming Northward | Coming June 27, 2023
  • Contact
  • Appearances
  • Plays
  • Media
  • What's up with Craig?
  • For book clubs
  • Support bookstores
  • The Short Story Project
  • Newsletter Archive

They're Leaving Us

6/30/2021

2 Comments

 
Picture
Sammy and Barbara Miller. Both gone. Both remembered.
PictureSearching the cabinets in Casper, Wyoming, when I was a little boy.
It was after Ned Beatty died—which came not long after Gavin McLeod died, which came on the heels of Charles Grodin's death—that my friend (and best man) Jim Thomsen said, via text, "We're losing the generation we looked up to."

Indeed, we are, as early Gen Xers, and there's a reason for that: We've made a right turn at middle age and are headed not away from Albuquerque but toward our own burning out. If people twenty and thirty and forty years our elder are finding the exit of this mortal coil, it's only proof that time is immutable and undefeated. We will follow them into stardust, and that eventuality is already close enough to whisper to us.

My reply to Jim that day: "Dying is the one thing we were born to do."

I've been thinking of that a lot—not necessarily Jim's observation, nor mine, but the relentlessness of time. It's not sentimental. It's not personal. It's not tender or caring. It just is. Every fraction of a second of every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every week of every month of every year...

I've also been thinking of it a lot since finding out that my Aunt Barbara died last week. If there's someone who has been in my life from cradle to now, my parents aside, it is her. An early friend of my mother and father. The sister of my eventual stepfather. The mother of cousins, once and twice and thrice removed. 

I've been driving for thirty-five years, and many of those years have seen me drive into or through Casper, Wyoming, the first home I ever had, just a few houses down from where Barbara and her family lived. And almost every time, I've made a stop to see Barbara, and before that Sammy, her late husband. It's a ritual that seems inseparable from what I know to be the way of my life: If I'm in Casper, I swing by and say hello.

There will be no more of it, at least no more that terminates at her front door. Time is not sentimental, but I remain so. I might still turn right off Poison Spider Road. I might still cast a glance left at the first house I ever knew. I might still wonder what my long-ago friend Richard is doing these days. I might wave at Barbara's house as I go by. But go by I will, because there's no longer any reason to stop and say hello.

It's hard to part with that. Hard for me, anyway.

2 Comments
Iva Streeter
7/1/2021 10:15:17 am

Just finished reading “and it will be a beautiful life”
I felt all the emotion that was so well written. It will take me a day or so to stop wanting to read more!!! Thanks again for giving me this book and for sharing a little bit of your life!?!

Best regards,
Iva Streeter

Reply
Craig Lancaster link
7/1/2021 04:32:23 pm

I'm so pleased you enjoyed it, Iva. It was wonderful meeting you on that Atlanta-Buffalo flight (and even sharing that interminable wait at the rental car counter).

You're in luck: I have nine other books that would love to be read by you.

https://www.craig-lancaster.com/books.html

Reply

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    About Craig

    Craig Lancaster is an author, an editor, a publication designer, a layabout, a largely frustrated Dallas Mavericks fan, an eater of breakfast, a dreamer of dreams, a husband, a brother, a son, an uncle. And most of all, a man who values a T-shirt.

    Archives

    May 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021

    By category

    All
    600 Hours Of Edward
    And It Will Be A Beautiful Life
    Awards
    Books
    Bookstores
    Community
    Connection
    Craft
    Education
    Edward Adrift
    Family
    Geography
    History
    Memory
    Montana
    NaNoWriMo
    People
    Plays
    Poetry
    Public Policy
    Q&A
    Social Media
    Sports
    Stage
    The Fallow Season Of Hugo Hunter
    The Summer Son
    This Is What I Want
    Time
    Travel
    Work
    Writers
    Writing

    Archives

    May 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021

    RSS Feed

    If you like what you see here, please consider a donation (one-time or ongoing, your choice, there's gratitude for everything/anything). It will be used to keep the website aloft, supplies, hardware/software. The necessities that keep a working writer going. Thank you.
  • Home
  • About
  • Books
    • And It Will Be a Beautiful Life
    • 600 Hours of Edward
    • The Summer Son
    • The Art of Departure
    • Edward Adrift
    • The Fallow Season of Hugo Hunter
    • This Is What I Want
    • Edward Unspooled
    • Julep Street
    • You, Me & Mr. Blue Sky
    • Dreaming Northward | Coming June 27, 2023
  • Contact
  • Appearances
  • Plays
  • Media
  • What's up with Craig?
  • For book clubs
  • Support bookstores
  • The Short Story Project
  • Newsletter Archive