When the Private Jokes Die, Too

      The older we get the more family and friends we lose, until, that is, there are fewer to lose. The older we get, we also spend more time thinking about loss—another word for it: grieving.

      These sorrowful concerns have been increasingly on my mind—and this doesn’t include considering eventual loss. That’s to say, how many daily conversations do we have with others about ailments, often potentially terminal ailments? The great Ruth Gordon (read her remarkable memoir “Myself Among Others”) was once quoted as saying her circle of friends had a pact stipulating that they’d never discuss health matters for more than a minute. And there’s a piece of smart advice undoubtedly rarely taken.

      Swapping the numbers of weekly doctor appointments, and the like ad infinitum, means, of course, the chats are with friends and family still extant. It’s when they’re no longer there that the pain takes hold. Indeed, how many of us have hoped to predecease this or that relative or friend, because we can’t bear the thought of living without him or her.

      So, dwelling on these more and more unavoidable, perhaps maudlin, thoughts recently, there’s one that suddenly jumped to the head of my line: private jokes.

      Don’t we all have private jokes with our closest family members and friends? Nicknames; events witnessed together and never forgotten (sometimes requiring only a single word to get us laughing); movies or television shows watched together—or separately but immediately raved or ranted about over the phone; opinions shared only with each other; and on and on.

      When those relatives or friends die, the private jokes are gone. They’re never to be shared again. Those laughs, sighs, reminiscences are lost, never again to be shared.

      Okay, yes, they do live in memory. They continue in one-sided recollection. Which is something not to be dismissed, possibly never to be dismissed. And yet that’s not enough, is it? What remains for us is acceptance, already a frequent factor in life, something to live almost happily with.

      So, now all that’s left for me to say, which no one else will get, is this: “Hello, Ellzie, it’s me, Davezie.”