Tangential Loss

If only I could be better at clearing out the clutter. I sigh in great weariness at all the trips from the living room to put away the dishes, the clothes, the pencils, pens, and markers, the stuffed animals, the books, the newspapers, the trash, the shoes and the papers that accumulate there in just a week's time. Once the clutter is cleared, a feeling of serenity washes over me and I am grateful for the absence of laziness in my day. I also wonder what all this is for, as I think about how short life can be. About how, in 100 years or less, me, and everyone I know, will be dead. (I'd give credit to the band that had a song with the same message but I but don't know who did it. It ended with, "so have a Merry Christmas.")
The last two days seemed to have a theme of death. In order of my discoveries, first, I learned of my very first landlord dying this week at the age of 92. He was the first landlord I had, in the first apartment I had, after I moved out of the college dorm in 1992. At the time he seemed unusual, but I didn't know anything about him. I had seen him in recent months, 16 years later, standing on his porch, looking exactly the same with his thick, black, framed glasses and lots of white hair. What struck me about him was that he was grumpy and always serious. He didn't have much of an accent, but he spoke a little differently and he always dressed professionally and wore a hat. According to his obituary, his wife had just passed away the year before I rented the apartment from him. Also, I learned he moved with this family from Italy to here in the 1920s. He was fluent in several languages. He had been admitted to law school but decided not to go. He had no children.
Second, I learned of a classmate from high school dying. I didn't know her very well. I don't know why she died, but she was way too young and it was shocking and sad to hear about it, even though I didn't know her well at all. I didn't know until yesterday that she was living only 20 miles from here. She was married and had two children. I believe that the last time I saw her was in the year 1992.
Third, I learned that a two-year-old girl who lived near my hometown died a few days ago. Comments I read with her obituary stated words of comfort like, "We don't know why God took her so early," "you (the parents) will find out when you are rejoined with her in heaven why she was taken away," or "there must have been a reason for her untimely death; only God knows." It turns out the reason is pretty clear. I read it in the news. Apparently those people didn't read the news. She died riding on an ATV with a 13-year-old driver and another child. The news article didn't exactly say she was riding on the ATV; it just said she died in a four-wheeler accident, so I suppose I have made an assumption about whether she was riding on it. Perhaps she was just in the way. Two. She is immortalized at the most cute, most loveable age, when the child has done no wrong and is just learning to speak in sentences.
Fourth, Tim Russert. It's all over the news. He died the old-fashioned way. Young and sudden. Of all the deaths this week, only Mr. Jess Williams led a full, long life, so it's not so much tragic that he passed away. Another mystery about the man was answered today; I always wondered if Jess was short for something. It is not. It's just Jess.