60th Birthday for One Ever-Young

After my eulogy for Oscar last week, it was not my intention to write again soon about the death of a 17-year-old. But I looked at the calendar today and realized this would have been my cousin Lance’s 60th birthday. All these years later, it threw me for a loop.

In a very close extended family, Lance was my senior by only three months. Until I entered my teens, I had no closer friend. About Easter of our junior year of high school, Lance drowned while scuba diving off the Southern California coast. The next day I wrote this haiku:

Like linked syllables
from the same word—now parted—

all my meanings change.

It won’t happen tonight, but I will be working on a post. You can watch for it.