The old superstition is that famous deaths always happen in threes. I'm not sure where all that got started and I'm sure the case could be made that the criteria depends largely on the strict definition of the word "famous".
But hair splitting aside, three people whose life accomplishements touched millions of lives all passed away within a day or two.
- John Stewart, originally a replacement member of the hit folk group, The Kingston Trio, whose main "claim to fame" in the end, was as the composer of the oldies radio staple and Monkees hit "Daydream Believer"....
- Allan Melvin, one of those actors whose name often didn't ring a bell, but whose face was instantly recognizable as an integral part of such iconic American television as The Phil Silvers Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, All In The Family and, of course, his main claim to fame, San the Butcher, the soft hearted "big lug" boyfriend of Alice, the housekeeper who kept The Brady Bunch fed and laundered all those polyester years....
- Suzanne Pleshette...ingenue actress in movies and television in the fifties and sixties, the lady with the dark eyes and throaty voice who became a household presence as the wife of psychologist Bob Hartley in the classic seventies sitcom, The Bob Newhart Show...and, of course, the lady who made TV history with the famous last episode "dream ending" of Newhart's later show about the Vermont inn where Larry, Daryl and Daryl hung out....
Goodbye and god bless, we're grateful we knew ye.....and this installment isnt at all about the impact these folks had on our lives. I'll leave that to the celebrity obit experts. For me, it was the one two three hit of losing these icons of my lifetime that got me thinking...and reminded me of an essay I wrote a couple of years ago.....one that I think is worth sharing....
tick tock
It happened again this morning.
The digital read out by the side of the bed indicated that it was very early.
Or very late, I suspect you would offer, if you end your day with the setting of the moon as opposed to the setting of the sun.
And I was awake. Not such an unusual occurrence. For I have found myself, of late, sleeping less, my mind giving me shorter periods of REM than I prefer to luxuriate in and flipping the ON switch to my consciousness much sooner than I would choose, given any control over the matter.
It’s not insomnia. I find falling asleep relatively easy, provided that I haven’t indulged myself during the day with the sweet lazy nectar of napping. And with the schedule my work demands, up and around before four a.m, I am, most often, easily ready for serious z’s even before Katie, Charlie and Brian have a chance to wish me a good evening and good night.
I don’t lie awake lamenting or pondering. I don’t toss and turn in fretful bursts of what ifs and why nots.
I sleep. And perchance to dream. Although, truth be told, I’d like to know who I could talk to about upgrading from the basic dream plan to a more premium package. For a guy who is celebrated and/or accused of such a gifted and creative imagination, my nocturnal playhouse is, too many nights, an awful snooze.
Pun intended.
The dreams are plentiful and constant, somewhat intricate and, yes, in color, thank you very much. But they are neither a source of enlightenment or entertainment. Neither bad nor sweet. Not symbolic enough to be easily analyzed and catalogued. Nor decadent enough to be enjoyed as an escape valve on the pressure cooker of real life fantasy.
In other words, there are no trains going into tunnels, no falling from great heights, no finding myself naked in front of a large group of Rotarians waiting for my address on business trends of the new millennium.
And it’s been so long since naked women have showed up that the dream state is getting close to overtaking the real life.
The dreams consist largely of bland situations with people who I may or may not recognize from my life present or past. If they were a weekly TV show, they would be canceled after only one or two shots for their appeal is marginal, at best, and only to me, the only person who would be even remotely interested in the first place.
But, my dreams and their content, or lack there of, are really the subject for another time and other pages of rambling.
Right now, I’m writing this to share that it happened again this morning.
It did not awaken me. The body clock I have, by routine, obviously set to the wee hours did that. And any resistance to returning to consciousness by my sleep center was overcome by the desire to turn off the dream machine, lest I be subjected to any more banal, mundane and decidedly non-erotic high def video psychobabble.
I simply woke up.
It was what I heard at the first moment of wakefulness that struck me. That registered as loud and as clear as the snapping of fingers.
The ticking of the clock on my bedroom wall.
And in that first moment of recognition, as I lay there in the pre dawn darkness, my rural surroundings offering nothing but peaceful silence, accented only occasionally by the slightest echo of a cricket or two somewhere out on the road, I realized that, of late, the sound is getting louder.
The ticking of the clock.
That was my first knee jerk thought process.
The second was fairly predictable.
Oh, for Christ’s sake, don’t get started on all that metaphorical symbolic bullshit about how you’re getting older and you’re living alone, again, and you’re frightened of dying by yourself and lying there for days on end without being discovered and the days of your life are counting down to a precious few and you only have a little time left to make it right with your kids and get to know your grandkids and to find the woman that you were honestly meant to spend your life with and to find some way to atone for all of your sins, mortal and otherwise, and convince God that you really deserve to go to Heaven and time’s a wastin and life is slipping away and the meter is running and it’s all being….measured…………….by……………………
The ticking of the clock.
And as I lay there listening, and thinking about it, I realized, my late middle-aged fears notwithstanding, that the sound of the clock has, without fanfare, subtly moved from the background of my everyday soundtrack to a prominent place in it.
From back row to first chair, in a symphonic manner of speaking.
It is no longer a shade blended into the palette, an undistinguishable voice in a chorus of voices, just another sound like all the other sounds in the audio mosaic of this life…car horns, traffic moving here and there and here yet again, the clacking of computer keyboards, the gurgling of the coffee maker, the ominous but comforting roar of the jet airliner flying low overhead, preparing to deliver its cargo of baggage, human and Samsonite, the sound of autumn rain on a country blacktop, the creaking of that damn chair the maintenance guys swore would be fixed last week, the clicking and dinging of the cash register in the grocery store checkout, the anguished cries of the kid denied the Hershey bar at the checkout, the rhythmic, chunking sound of that erector set on wheels that waters the crops and your car as you drive past farm and field, the laughter of people enjoying a moment, the aborted sneeze of the allergy afflicted who struggle to be polite and keep it to themselves, the blissful and, at the same instant, painful sound of lovers reaching climax together, the clink of glasses as success is achieved, failure is averted, life and its accomplishments are celebrated..and the ticking of the clock marking the passage of time in that life.
Now, suddenly, without so much as a by your leave, the ticking sound has moved out in front of the pack. No longer content to be part of the ensemble. Determined to be center stage, clear and precise, its presence not quite obtrusive, but ever audible.
And what shall I take from this hint being not so gently dropped in my direction?
Hysterical vows to repent aside, maybe there is some good to be gotten here. Perhaps there is some advantage to be gained by embracing this newly prominent percussion.
Maybe I really can hear it as a wake up call.
Pun intended, again.
And not as a fear inducing harbinger of the doom to come. Not as a spiritual panic alarm warning of the urgent need to stop living a life in the straw and build a moral house of bricks.
Not as a countdown to a detonation of retribution for sins committed and injustices inflicted.
But, perhaps, simply as a reminder.
An emotional and spiritual string around my finger. A calm and quiet and steady voice just over my shoulder, helping me to appreciate that which I have, to date, not appreciated fully. To do more of the right things, especially in a world where the wrong things are in such abundance and come in such tempting and easy to swallow packaging. To more often offer an outstretched hand and less often an outstretched middle finger. To stop talking so much to God about the lack of reasons why so little of this life makes any sense and listen a little more on the chance that I’ll then be able to hear a reason…
There’s a Bonnie Raitt song that comes to mind.
“Life gets mighty precious/ When there’s less of it to waste”
Yeah, yeah. Stop and smell the roses. I get it.
And if I forget it, there is always the ticking of that clock to remind me.
Then again, maybe the damn thing is that loud because it needs new batteries.
Somehow, I doubt it.
It happened again this morning.
The digital read out by the side of the bed indicated that it was very early.
Or very late, I suspect you would offer, if you end your day with the setting of the moon as opposed to the setting of the sun.
And I was awake. Not such an unusual occurrence. For I have found myself, of late, sleeping less, my mind giving me shorter periods of REM than I prefer to luxuriate in and flipping the ON switch to my consciousness much sooner than I would choose, given any control over the matter.
It’s not insomnia. I find falling asleep relatively easy, provided that I haven’t indulged myself during the day with the sweet lazy nectar of napping. And with the schedule my work demands, up and around before four a.m, I am, most often, easily ready for serious z’s even before Katie, Charlie and Brian have a chance to wish me a good evening and good night.
I don’t lie awake lamenting or pondering. I don’t toss and turn in fretful bursts of what ifs and why nots.
I sleep. And perchance to dream. Although, truth be told, I’d like to know who I could talk to about upgrading from the basic dream plan to a more premium package. For a guy who is celebrated and/or accused of such a gifted and creative imagination, my nocturnal playhouse is, too many nights, an awful snooze.
Pun intended.
The dreams are plentiful and constant, somewhat intricate and, yes, in color, thank you very much. But they are neither a source of enlightenment or entertainment. Neither bad nor sweet. Not symbolic enough to be easily analyzed and catalogued. Nor decadent enough to be enjoyed as an escape valve on the pressure cooker of real life fantasy.
In other words, there are no trains going into tunnels, no falling from great heights, no finding myself naked in front of a large group of Rotarians waiting for my address on business trends of the new millennium.
And it’s been so long since naked women have showed up that the dream state is getting close to overtaking the real life.
The dreams consist largely of bland situations with people who I may or may not recognize from my life present or past. If they were a weekly TV show, they would be canceled after only one or two shots for their appeal is marginal, at best, and only to me, the only person who would be even remotely interested in the first place.
But, my dreams and their content, or lack there of, are really the subject for another time and other pages of rambling.
Right now, I’m writing this to share that it happened again this morning.
It did not awaken me. The body clock I have, by routine, obviously set to the wee hours did that. And any resistance to returning to consciousness by my sleep center was overcome by the desire to turn off the dream machine, lest I be subjected to any more banal, mundane and decidedly non-erotic high def video psychobabble.
I simply woke up.
It was what I heard at the first moment of wakefulness that struck me. That registered as loud and as clear as the snapping of fingers.
The ticking of the clock on my bedroom wall.
And in that first moment of recognition, as I lay there in the pre dawn darkness, my rural surroundings offering nothing but peaceful silence, accented only occasionally by the slightest echo of a cricket or two somewhere out on the road, I realized that, of late, the sound is getting louder.
The ticking of the clock.
That was my first knee jerk thought process.
The second was fairly predictable.
Oh, for Christ’s sake, don’t get started on all that metaphorical symbolic bullshit about how you’re getting older and you’re living alone, again, and you’re frightened of dying by yourself and lying there for days on end without being discovered and the days of your life are counting down to a precious few and you only have a little time left to make it right with your kids and get to know your grandkids and to find the woman that you were honestly meant to spend your life with and to find some way to atone for all of your sins, mortal and otherwise, and convince God that you really deserve to go to Heaven and time’s a wastin and life is slipping away and the meter is running and it’s all being….measured…………….by……………………
The ticking of the clock.
And as I lay there listening, and thinking about it, I realized, my late middle-aged fears notwithstanding, that the sound of the clock has, without fanfare, subtly moved from the background of my everyday soundtrack to a prominent place in it.
From back row to first chair, in a symphonic manner of speaking.
It is no longer a shade blended into the palette, an undistinguishable voice in a chorus of voices, just another sound like all the other sounds in the audio mosaic of this life…car horns, traffic moving here and there and here yet again, the clacking of computer keyboards, the gurgling of the coffee maker, the ominous but comforting roar of the jet airliner flying low overhead, preparing to deliver its cargo of baggage, human and Samsonite, the sound of autumn rain on a country blacktop, the creaking of that damn chair the maintenance guys swore would be fixed last week, the clicking and dinging of the cash register in the grocery store checkout, the anguished cries of the kid denied the Hershey bar at the checkout, the rhythmic, chunking sound of that erector set on wheels that waters the crops and your car as you drive past farm and field, the laughter of people enjoying a moment, the aborted sneeze of the allergy afflicted who struggle to be polite and keep it to themselves, the blissful and, at the same instant, painful sound of lovers reaching climax together, the clink of glasses as success is achieved, failure is averted, life and its accomplishments are celebrated..and the ticking of the clock marking the passage of time in that life.
Now, suddenly, without so much as a by your leave, the ticking sound has moved out in front of the pack. No longer content to be part of the ensemble. Determined to be center stage, clear and precise, its presence not quite obtrusive, but ever audible.
And what shall I take from this hint being not so gently dropped in my direction?
Hysterical vows to repent aside, maybe there is some good to be gotten here. Perhaps there is some advantage to be gained by embracing this newly prominent percussion.
Maybe I really can hear it as a wake up call.
Pun intended, again.
And not as a fear inducing harbinger of the doom to come. Not as a spiritual panic alarm warning of the urgent need to stop living a life in the straw and build a moral house of bricks.
Not as a countdown to a detonation of retribution for sins committed and injustices inflicted.
But, perhaps, simply as a reminder.
An emotional and spiritual string around my finger. A calm and quiet and steady voice just over my shoulder, helping me to appreciate that which I have, to date, not appreciated fully. To do more of the right things, especially in a world where the wrong things are in such abundance and come in such tempting and easy to swallow packaging. To more often offer an outstretched hand and less often an outstretched middle finger. To stop talking so much to God about the lack of reasons why so little of this life makes any sense and listen a little more on the chance that I’ll then be able to hear a reason…
There’s a Bonnie Raitt song that comes to mind.
“Life gets mighty precious/ When there’s less of it to waste”
Yeah, yeah. Stop and smell the roses. I get it.
And if I forget it, there is always the ticking of that clock to remind me.
Then again, maybe the damn thing is that loud because it needs new batteries.
Somehow, I doubt it.
1 comment:
Shall I increase your sense of well being that the idea of tiring batteries may apply to more than just the clock?
Having recently pushed into my fifties I find it altogether unfair that despite drained batteries the clock moves unexpectedly faster while my body moves expectedly slower. There is a void that is forming between the two timelines. I hope there is something exciting waiting there. Something that can be enjoyed at the speed setting of extended play.
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