The white haired trumpet player standing in the doorway blasts for all the heavens to hear. He is perfectly in sync with his superb band of fellow players, volunteer artists one and all, crowded in front of the picture window at Offshore Ale. I wonder for a second if he breathes like me or is he some kind of super-human, incapable of hyperventilating like the rest of us, his middle aged, if not older, contemporaries.

Then the thought occurs to me, he is playing for his life or maybe for her life. He is, as the poet said, not going gently into that good night. With every breath he is raging against the dying of the light: a proxy for all those who had no choice. They lived and died by some unknown timetable. A clock, as mysterious and inscrutable as cancer, punches us in, but just when our day ends is never known to us.

We who have lost those we desperately loved (love!), know the pain waiting in the antechamber of this time. In that room, we and those who wait with us clamber to be heard above the din. We sing and we beat and we pluck and we blow and we force the life of our bodies into some form that speaks loudly and plainly, “we can change this in our time!”, “we can stop this from ending this way!”

Little girls know nothing of this rage. They spend their time with schoolwork and friends and pets and figuring out what this very large world around them means, until the unthinkable happens and one so young is forced to the front in this battle. All we know now is a little girl in a winter hat needs us. And she is like all little girls. She is beautiful and radiant and full of life.

The trumpet player passed by me in the crowd and I said, “Great job, man!” He replied, “I need a drink, I blew my whistle out!”

Yes, exactly. We all need to exhaust ourselves to end this misery. I wish Offshore Ale was twice as big today. The power of the emotion here certainly is.

Marco Rivera
Oak Bluffs