Exactly a week ago, my friend Walt said he wasn’t going to hang out for a while because he was flying out to a close friend’s funeral. Walt is 70, so my first thought was, “This is what life looks like at his age, how sad.”
A week later, I’m texting Walt to say I won’t be available for a few days because I’m flying out to a friend’s funeral.
Yeah, there’s an old saying in America: “I only dress up [wear a dress suit and tie] when I got to a wedding or a funeral.” I bought my last two suits (in the mid 1980s and in 2001) for the sake of my then-young niece, who wanted me to attend church with her and her mother when I came home from the military on periodic visits, and in 2001 when she wanted me to give her away at her wedding because her father was too ill to attend the ceremony.
In all the years since, I’ve worm my last suit at least half a dozen times — always at funerals of vanishing family or elderly friends in the local Austrian Society of Arizona. I doubt I’ll be wearing it at any more weddings.
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