I want to write about Jeremy Ayers but I don't have time

But I will get a start. I'm being swept along by the forces of life. So many endings piling up. I wrote down two thoughts.

One thing you don't want to do in this life is stagnate.

In a long life are many goodbyes.

I was in the middle of going through my Mom and Dad's archives, the task I saved for last, when Roy called. Most of the papers and letters and various items were crammed into a file cabinet and boxes in my old bedroom downstairs that later became Dad's home office when I moved out of it into the larger and cooler (literally) bedroom in the opposite corner of the basement that Anne vacated when she left. A number of large hinged cartons of Mom's research files, newsletters and copies of magazines with articles she published were in the third bedroom. This was Scottie's former abode from when she was known as Kay, a name she always hated. I left permanently in 1976. Scottie came back periodically during the time she was transitioning from addiction to stability. That would have been in the 1980s after I graduated from WVU and moved with Mary Lou to Baton Rouge, all of which is another story entirely.

I wanted to go through the papers carefully and keep everything that was meaningful. Quite a bit of information about Mom and Dad's life and work was preserved. Then Roy called and said Jeremy had a seizure and was in the hospital on life support. He had no brain activity Roy said. He was essentially dead. Roy had seen and spoken to him only a day or two earlier. It was a shock to him.

The effect on me was filtered by the fact I had been seeing my parents' lives in the long perspective. I could think of Jeremy this way, too. Our Dad's played golf together at Green Hills Country Club as far back as I remember. Jeremy (Jerry back then) was friends with Anne. They played "Jet Set" pretending they were wealthy international partiers. They modeled this on The Pink Panther.  I associate the delightful film score with them during this period. Later, Jerry and I went to the Green Hills swimming pool in the summer and hung out. He was so beautiful and charming and he was four years older. Girls were drawn to him and I was in awe and clueless.