maurie and vera are dead

Maurie and Vera are dead.
I didn't actually know either of them.
They are from the same patch of land in central nebraska as my mom.
They were friends of my grandparents, who are still alive.
Still alive and up to the task of going to the funerals of all their dead friends.
My mom says my grandma says that the funerals keep getting smaller.
Dead people don't go to funerals.

It sounds like a morbid life.
Once your ladies bridge club falls apart.
Once you don't have the energy to cook Christmas dinner
Once your gay grandchildren get too old to come visit and pretend they're straight.
Once you think you're too old to drive to Kansas City for your granddaughter's wedding
Even after all this, you're not too old to go to funerals in town.
Between church, the grocery store, the nursing home and the funeral parlor
You've been up and down main street and seen more ghosts and strangers than familiar faces.
but at least you're there.
at least you know when you're friends and acquaintances and cousins of cousins die
will i?
will we?
will social networking follow us to our graves?
will i get an email when my coworker from 1999 dies of heart attack?
when the guy i drove to school my junior year of high school dies of prostate cancer, will I have a clue?
Will I know?
Will i have the chance to feel blue?
will the geographical distances, the moving, moving always moving
what is it that we are proving?
will transient existences and transplanted Christmases change the human experience of outlasting most of your peers?
will zip code drifting sideswipe our tears?

To grow old and grow melancholy in two thousand forty something...
I hope the sadness is for losses I can see,
and not unannounced losses that must surely be.