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Continued from last month I would think about Dariel again in a few weeks on the anniversary of her death, as I always do, while pretending to try and enjoy my birthday. I do a rather miserable job of trying in most people's minds, but I really succeed. Actually in a big, big way. THE FUTON V by NELSON GARY Oh yes, I live large, but not grand on my birthday. If there is anyone there with me on that day, the anniversary of her death, my birthday--there have been fewer people every year--I prefer their sympathy to their exaltations for getting older, for getting more decrepit, for getting less intellectually sharp. Forget the company of Dariel's family on my birthday. I would never get rid of them, and my memory has to be exquisite, perfect, full, detailed, photographic, and all this is demanding. If they came to a birthday, the rather large group of them, one of them would be calling me or turning up all the time, and I need to conserve my energy at my age for that much mourning, that much misery. For a man of my age, it is much more reasonable to express condolences than congratulations on yet another year, and I am certain her family would oblige me that one day that much, that one thing, but they would not leave me alone like most everyone else, not because they wanted to see me or really cared, but because of some sort of societal obligation to their daughter's widower. I probably did them a favor disappearing from their lives without a trace. At any rate, I always feel more comfortable getting sympathy instead of that other madness on my birthday since Dariel's death. If not sympathy for my advancing years and all the natural and inevitable horrors of that, then for my wife, both are in line, and besides, on my birthday, all I can think of is her death. There's nothing going on that day but commeroration of her death, that it. I really don't want any distractions from this, thank you very much, but I am not against a chorus of mourners, even of the most half-hearted variety. I want honesty...»»

F I C T I O N

	February 2003