Harry Potter Eve . . .

Y'know, I was looking forward to this day . . . It is Friday, I'm going to the MFA with my friend Anne, and then I'm going to wait for midnight to get my copy of the last Harry Potter book . . .
and weirdly, it has been an awfully depressing day. I have cried twice. And I can't remember the last time I cried. Possibly it was the day I had to "kidnap" my Leilei, and that was sympathetic crying.

Is this some kind of weird premonition mourning over a tragic Harry Potter conclusion?????

Or is it some bizarre hormonal surge? Or is it just a belated reaction to the various stresses of my life??? I pride myself on being happy, and this is most distressing. Moreover, my face looks most unattractive.

Since I'm in this reflective, mournful mood, this might be the post to note that I attended the Lantern Festival at Forest Hills cemetary recently. Met my good friends Kathi and Callie, and Mary there, and it was a beautiful evening. Very moving ceremony as always.

In past years I've made my lanterns for family and friends who have died, but this year I made a lantern for two people I never met. Liam was the little nephew of my good friend Jonathan, and from the day he was born I heard a lot about him and his twin brother, and their slightly older brother. Liam was never well or strong, and Jonathan was always concerned about him. When he died, I felt sad, and yet relieved for him in a way, since he would never be able to live
life fully. But the death of a child can never be "for the best."

Recently my friend Tina's mom died. I saw her once, in an airport. I never even talked to her, but through Tina, I see the legacy she left. Her name was Lola. When I heard she died, I immediately thought of a conversation I had recently had with Tina, during which she said one of her kids was so worried about her family dying that Tina had said to her mom, "you are not allowed to die, ever."

So Libby and I made lanterns for them.
Here's the poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay that I was thinking of when Libby set them on the water:

Dirge without Music
Edna St. Vincent Millay
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains, --- but the best is lost.

The answers quick & keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,
They are gone. They have gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.