Imaginary Landscape

When I was in my 30s and 40s, I used to call my parents, and sometime during the conversation, they would relate to me all their friends who had died since we’d last talked. It seemed so gruesome. Now that I have reached the same age they were, I’m the one who’s beginning to lose friends. Celebrities I grew up with seem to be dying like the leaves falling from the trees in autumn. Dear friends have lost spouses. My son died. At the same time, one of my hobbies keeps me in the world of the dead – genealogy. My ex used to call it “searching for dead people.” And one expects ancestors born hundreds of years ago to be long gone; however, there was a time when I hoped to find relatives still living. When I discovered they had died just a few years before, it was a blow. If only I’d begun my search sooner; if only I’d researched more intently; if only… In the 70s, I set out to find my maternal grandmother. I remember when I was a child, my mother asking me to put my finger on the br