Half Life

During my recent extensive and ongoing cleaning marathon, I discovered a copy of the last genealogical update compiled on my Old Yankee Family by my gay uncle. He, only only a dozen years older than I, has shouldered the moth eaten mantle typically born in clans such as ours by one of the Maiden Aunts or Eccentric Bachelor Uncles. There's always at least one. This is fortunate, as I am far too lazy for the task myself and my cousin R. is far too involved with her 4x4 and softball league to have the necessary time. I suspect no Keeper of the Name will be found in my generation, and curatorship of the boxes of photos, letters, documents and disks of files will pass to my brother Henry's third boy: kittenish, doe eyed, "creative", and who at age seven - upon glimpsing the disco ball which dangles from the rear view mirror of my car - immediately pronounced it to be "fabulous".

Anyway, the factoid relevant to this post ( rather than say a much juicier one; like that a horrific house fire which consumed all members of one branch of the family [save my future great great grandfather who was away] has recently been determined to be the murder-by-arson conclusion of an Appalachian blood feud rather than the accident he always claimed it to be) is that over the last one hundred and fifty years or so, death greets male members of my family in the eighty sixth year of their age. On average. Many in fact lived well into their 90s, but a few less sturdy and resilient succumbed earlier, bringing down everybody's numbers.

Forty three more years to go!