2005 Recap

I started out to write a recap of everything significant that happened to me during the past year. I had a list ready, complete with links to my entries that originally described the events.  There were highs and lows:  vacations, new friends, old friends, birthdays, a reunion and a breakup, 3 concerts, lost job, found job, one wedding, and lots of other crap no one wants to read about a second time.  And I don't have it in me right now to write about it a second time either.  Stroll through the archives if you're so inclined.

Some things that happened I never wrote about, and felt guilty for the omission, but the words were never there when they were supposed to be.  Still aren't, but I feel compelled at the moment.  The year's closing and I don't want the door shut on it without putting something out there. 

In 2005, three of my cousins died.  Three.  Each one younger than I am.  I can't say I was close to them or even when the last time I saw them was.

But still.

If it had been just one, well, one you can "explain."  Two in one year is a horrible . . . coincidence?  What's the right word for that?  Three, though.  Three of my cousins' untimely deaths in one year? Three cousins not outliving their parents?

Two chose their moment to exit; the third, who died yesterday, was taken unwillingly.  For each, I hope they experience the following (written about a pilot's experience, but nevermind that):

High Flight

by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds...and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of...wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up, the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, nor even eagle flew.
And while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space...
...put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

 

Rest in peace, cousins. Rest in peace.

Comments

[Jackie Howell]

To Whomever?

Thanks for asking for the original author of this Itinerary! it is my brother Brendan James Dunphy originally of Kearny, New Jersey ..now LBI and Hoboken!!

Chances are you got it from one of his many, many friends or abundant siblings or relatives! We are many!

Happy St. Patricks's Day to you and ...
Up Armagh, Kilkenny, Kildare Claire and yes County Hudson!!

American first, Irish always!

xo
Brendan's sister Jackie