December 17, 2007
Monday

Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
                — John Donne, 1572-1631, English poet and cleric
                    from Meditation XVII of Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions,
                    which bears the epigraph
                   “Nunc lento sonitu dicunt, Morieris.”
                   (“Now this bell tolling softly tells me, thou must die.”)

About a month after I turned fifty-nine I decided that I wanted to throw myself a big party for my sixtieth birthday. I had never had a party as a child because my mother felt awkward inviting people to an event that demanded they bring a gift. I certainly didn’t want any gifts, but I wanted the party, to celebrate the abundance of love and joy that the people I know bring to my life.

While waiting for a friend at a restaurant where I’d attended several catered affairs, I picked up their banquet menu. A nice event could be put on for any of several price levels. I pulled out my notebook and started making a list.

Now for my Holiday Open House Extravaganza, it really doesn’t matter how many people I invite. Guests come and go at different times, some nibble at cheese and fruit, some make a meal of the ham balls or the lasagna, some have only my cardamom rolls or red velvet cake. I invite almost everyone I know, even people I’ve had only casual contact with in the past year. The invitation is always extended to the addressee, the addressee’s family including all of the children, house guests, or other hangers on. We’ve never had too many people in the house at once and we’ve never run out of food.

But a sit-down dinner, or even a buffet, priced per person, demands more careful planning. I started in on my list and found myself writing things like “Mary Smith” and underneath “Mary’s Husband,” because I know Mary from a specialized activity but I’d never met her husband and didn’t even know his name. Did I want to invite him too? And what about all of the participants in another activity? I invite them all to my open house, even though I’m close to only two of them. Did I like the others enough to treat them to a sit-down dinner instead of a slice of lasgana and a chocolate chip cookie?

By the time my friend arrived I was starting my fourth column, and each column represented $500, more than the cost of my entire open house. And I hadn’t yet figured in the cost of flowers nor the Elvis impersonator who would take my hand and gaze into my eyes and sing “Love Me Tender.”

A few months later I was still toying with the idea. Lynn and I were sitting at the kitchen table, she feeling morose over the breakup with her longtime boyfriend, a surprise that hit her hard and was, of course, entirely his fault. I told her that I saw a silver lining, at least for me. I could now cross four people off my party list: the boyfriend, his parents, and his sister, the latter three invited merely as a courtesy. I opened my notebook and made a strong bold line through each of the four names.

And then Lynn gasped. “Look,” she said. There was the name of my dear friend Marilyn, and underneath it her husband, Joel. Joel had died suddenly a few weeks before.

I put the list away and never thought again about having the birthday party.

In the last few days I’ve been giving serious thought to whether or not I can mount even a modified Holiday Open House Extravaganza this year. I looked at my most recent guest list. As I’ve said before, it has been an annus mirabilis for me. I’ve made new friends, not just new acquaintances, since the last party, reconnected with some old ones. And part of that almost aggressive connection and reconnection was triggered by the fact that some people I truly cared about and not been in touch with enough had died.

Still, I can’t invite everyone, and I was thinking of trying to keep it small this year.

One person who came to mind was a former teaching colleague whom I met in 1973. Our relationship had been through many stages, running the gamut from animosity to intimacy, making that circuit more than once. She could be a difficult person (as which of us is not!) whose loyalties could be fluid, who often played politics with a faculty that could be as emotionally adolescent as the young people we served, and who liked to be on the side that was winning (and that was so rarely my side). Yet we’d gone out to plays and other events together from time to time, she and her husband had been to dinner at my house, and she called me frequently in the year or so after I left teaching. Then the sands of her devotion apparently shifted again. Another colleague and I gave her a luncheon on the occasion of her retirement two years ago, and we never saw her again. Maybe it was time to drop her from the party list, and probably the Dreaded Annual Holiday Letter list as well.

Last night Ron and Lynn and I put up our tree. I thought of my friend when I handed Lynn the hand-crafted wooden angel that this woman had given her, when I set out the unusual candle holder she’d given me one year, the Lenox candy dish that had been a wedding gift. I went to bed undecided about the party and the guest list.

This morning I learned that my off-again on-again, sometimes close and sometimes estranged friend died on Friday, one month before she would turn fifty-six.

I’m having the party, and I’m inviting everyone I know.

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