The Painted Timbers, 49th Day of Autumn, 526 M.E. (Electra): At the wedding reception, they asked a Zen monk to say a few words. He got up, raised a glass, and said, "May your grandparents die and may your parents die."

"May you die," he went on, "and may your children die. And may their children die." While the whole wedding party was shocked and aghast, the monk sat down with a big, self-satisfied grin on his face, as if thinking, "Nailed it!"

The father of the bride, fuming with anger, stood up and asked, "How dare you?"  He demanded to know what the monk meant by saying such things.

"Death is the inevitable result of life," the monk explained. "We mustn't forget that someday we all will die. But no parent should ever have to experience the death of their child, so the best outcome, the happiest thing, is for the elderly grandparents to die first, before the parents, and for the parents to die before their children. And then for those children to die before their children. That's the natural order of things. That's the best possible outcome, the kindest thing anyone can wish upon any family."

My father respected that natural order of things, dying in 2007 at age 75 before any of his children. And his father, Silas Jr., son of Silas Sr., son of Eli the former slave on Hannah Hart's Plantation at Cashua Creek, died in 1959 before my father did. And yes, Eli was the first to go (1894) and Silas Sr. left us in 1933. The natural order of things: great-great grandfather departing before great-grandfather; great- grandfather departing before grandfather, grandfather departing father, and father departing before his son. All things passing in the sequence that they should. Impermanence is swift. 

But my baby brother, ten years younger than I, messed it all up, dying young, age 60, in 2024, while our mother was still alive. Mom, to be sure, was 91 and pretty frail by then, living in a nursing home and bordering on dementia. We didn't have the heart to tell her that her youngest son had passed away; it would have broken her heart and possibly have killed her. In any event, she passed away four months later.

But it wasn't my mother who messed up the natural order by living too long. My baby brother died before I did, and while I was technically the same generation and not the parent, I still should have been the first to go. It was my birthright. He messed it up by departing this mortal coil way too soon. 

Then yesterday, my little sister, six years my junior, lost her year-long battle to cancer, further upsetting the natural order of things. 

There were six of us: my two parents and then me, followed by two sisters six and eight years later, and then my baby brother. There was another brother between me and my first sister who tragically died within days of birth - my mother's greatest heartbreak, and maybe the harbinger that the natural order wasn't going to apply to our family. 

Now it's just me and the one remaining sister, two little Indians left from the original six-pack of a family, and my ischemic heart is indicating that I'll most likely be the next to go.

As it should be. Impermanence is swift.