The Late Ray
—in loving memory of Ray Lantos, 1924-2007

In his last years with Parkinson’s—
largely immobile—
he’d think he was waiting,
or, more often, late:
late to meet his residents for rounds,
late to get to the airport,
late for the wedding reception
or the sports banquet.
Always polite, but,
you see,
always some other place
he really should be.

We suspect this comforted him.
We know it comforted us.
For surely the Hebrew Home,
and the hospital bed, and the wheelchair,
and the TV lounge,
and the hot little dining room,
were not where he
was meant to be.

The close air.
Good thing
he wasn’t there.
His funeral at Arlington
went like clockwork.
Elegant. Efficient.
Stately in its slow rapidity.
Right.
On time.

I don’t believe in afterlives.
And afterward, early lives meekly retreat.
“If you throw that, I pity your soul,”
he told a would-be snowball assailant
who’d threatened Ray’s little brother.
Was that an initial glimpse
of Ray’s, among all the pitied souls,
on Normandy little more than a decade later?
Childhood shrinks
before the adulthood it births.
Then adulthood shrinks
before the bewildered octogenarian schoolchildren.

Existence is a droopy dreidl.

Ray’s memories and appointments
were kept, like words,
to himself, for others.

The thrice purple-hearted heart specialist
was disinterested in guns.
He had great luck, and awful—
trading the European theater for Broadway,
Omaha Beach for Ogunquit
or the dock at Thompson Lake.
He could do no worse.
He could do no better.

Reading a good biography
with unstroked eyes,
munching his beloved redskin peanuts,
watching a game on TV—
any game, mutedly triggering
his old championship high-school nerve tendrils—
sipping his martini—
Beefeater, dry, straight up.
Glass.
Chilled.
That’s where he is, I reckon.

When we visited,
he was just visiting—
considerate that way.

If we’ll excuse him,
he’s off now.
All is done.
Nothing’s left,
but the sweet rest—
long anticipated,
hard-won.

-Alexander C. Kafka