Is Everyone My Age Dead?

I was listening to Terry Gross a couple of days ago, and she was talking to and about Margaret Whiting...and I wondered if she is alive still. She and her manager used to come into my restaurant in Old Town, Chicago and drink coffee and eat ice cream.. I did make great ice cream things.... I had New York style hot fudge, so I got all the New Yorkers....dark, dark chocolate. The midwestern people like milk chocolate...yuck! Everyone also loved my chocolate-mint sodas...no wonder I am a rather large person now....dark chocolate and mint ice cream....ummmmm. Have another of those 'Bliss' chocolates....don't mind if I do. No wonder Margaret W. loved singing "Too Marvelous For Words"....anyone can sing it....even I can sing it...and I can't sing. Never could sing poor Whitney to sleep.....she used to say, "Don't sing mummy....please don't sing, it hurts my ears." And I know the words to every song from WWI to date...no, I wasn't around during WWI, but Aunt Nellie and Uncle George had an old wind-up Victrola with dozens of records and I played them over and over all the time I was visiting there. Used to go up to the 'ballroom' on the top floor and slide around the lovely smooth wood floor.

All the rest of them.....all gone.....Langston Hughes, who put up with all the questions from a silly little girl; Ned Travis, who didn't, but wound up my friend later; Max Showalter who hung out at our house when he was in "My Sister Eileen"...and the adorable Greek kid who was one of the 'Brazilian Navy;' all the artists (whose names I have to search in dusty corners of my mind to remember....who encouraged me to keep drawing and painting...after all, I presented a lovely drawing of a penguin to Admiral Byrd when I was five; Gladys Schmitt, who encouraged me in my writing, while I typed "David the King" for her; all the crazy people from the Pittsburgh Playhouse...strike parties with Gene and Fred Kelly teaching us dance steps...Mr. Burleigh barking out orders and me throwing up before going on......and they are all gone now, leaving me alone, like the last person alive...even Barry and Jan gone, both a year younger than I.

Well, I guess that's what happens when you get dropped. even if it's not on your head....all the people from your past go marching by saying, 'Well, what did you expect....got yourself into it didn't you.....nobody's fault but your own..........' am I blue...you'd be too..... Ah, well...........