Miss me? I drove to California for Theresa Coursey’s memorial service, and while it was swell to be among friends, people I hadn’t seen in a spell, a guy likes everyone to be present and accounted for, and we were one fine woman short.
Theresa’s service drew a standing-room-only crowd, the sort we’d all secretly like to have, but few of us deserve. Theresa had it coming. Her husband and their children all spoke, and if there was a dry eye in the house it was not one of mine.
Afterward we ate and drank, talked and took long walks, and after a few days together we all scattered, returning to our lives in Prescott, Philly, Tempe, New York, Colorado. But I’m still thinking of Theresa, wishing I’d spent more time around her, and I know I’m not alone.
Being present these days is not always easy, but it remains vital. In “Taking the Path of Zen,” the late Robert Aitken Roshi recounted the evening message of sesshin as given at Hawaii’s Diamond Sangha:
I beg to urge you, everyone:
Life-and-death is a grave matter,
all things pass quickly away;
each of us must be completely alert:
never neglectful, never indulgent.
That’s my evening message to you. In the morning, the comedy will resume.
Mad Blog Media 
My sympathies to you and her family and friends on your loss. After the second day without a post from you I figured that you were busy supporting her family and attending services. Yes, you were missed.
Yes, you were missed; but glad you made that trip. Lives should be celebrated with laughter and tears. I hope mine will be.
A day without the dog is a boring day
Time like that is well spent, Patrick. But glad to see you back at the pickle barrel. Its been a bizzare few days in the old USA.
Welcome back! Now start being funny again, we’ve tried to amuse ourselves in your absence but there’s no way yours truly can be as smart-assed as you are, no matter how hard I try!
Thanks, y’all. We gave Theresa a fine sendoff — actually, her family and friends did; I just bought some drinks, and then drank most of them.
And then the whole Arizona thing comes along the day after the service and we’re all thinking, “What the fuck?” That the phrase “isn’t life already short enough” is hackneyed doesn’t make it less applicable.
Some folks wonder why I always go about armed in Arizona. I lived there once, albeit briefly, and even I — an owner of more than one gun — was taken aback by the state of firearms worship there. It was not uncommon to walk into a breakfast place and see a bunch of John Waynes perched on stools at the counter, pistols on their hips.
Once I saw an outlaw biker booming down the road with an assault weapon slung over one shoulder. Oh-kay, I thought. As Richard Pryor once said, in character as Mudbone, if someone gets hurt up in here, I ain’t gonna be the last one.