I thought of author W. H. Auden's quote: "Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic." When I first read that line in one of Auden's poems many years ago, the meaning eluded me, but suddenly on graduation day, it had such clarity. For what is a graduation, but a big picnic of a sort... So I looked at the sky and it just looks hazy... yet again.. I think I hear thunder...

So I yell down to Matt to check the local weather channel and see if we are expecting a storm. He reports up, "No, that's later today. 5 min later, the skies are black and Matt and I are yelling up to the girls, who are glued to their respective mirrors quaffing, to move the arses out the door before the rain. Just as we made the car, the sky opened and sheets of rain started to come down, along with lighting hitting things that we could actually see. The girls, sophisticated woman of the world that they are, started to scream like 5 year olds, and I'm thinking as I tell them to cool it... this isn't good. We drive very slowly through the rivers that were just streets a few minutes ago, to the college campus where the graduation is taking place. The storm that wasn't supposed to be, has gotten even worse, and now I can see lightning hitting in the parking lot. Of course, this paralyzes all of the families stuck in their cars. All these people had to get into the building come hell or high water... in this case both, and so we all started to wade through the ankle high water, I in my brand new shoes. Matt goes to park the car.

Now Matt is a different animal to moi. His parents should have named him Felix Unger. He got out of the car and seeing the river before him that he had to cross to get into the building bends down to roll up his pants, making him invisible due to the sheets of rain. The obvious question remains why his soaking wet back doesn't bother him, but wet pant bottoms would, but hey why ask questions? He bent over to take off his shoes, when a car just barely missed hitting him...

The horrified driver jumps out of the car, to see if he had actually hit Matt, and who is it? Jeff Sunshine. Now that name might sound vaguely familiar here to some of our vegan friends, since Debby Sunshine is his wife, is a member of this group, and oh yeah, my close friend. Jeff is visibly shaken, but the weather has made it an imperative to get in, and so Matt is totally unaware of how close he had come to getting hit.

Again, death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.

So we all start to find our seats now running over a half hour late, due to the weather, when we hear a bang, and suddenly... black. The auditorium's power has just gone out. No lights, no amps for the PA and NO AIR CONDITIONING! A few minutes later, the emergency generator kicks in and we have dim lights and some power for the PA, but no AC. Decisions must be made about what to do, to carry on or not. The powers that be decide to do away with all the speeches, (thank the heavens for that, literally), and to just go ahead with the graduation. I sit there in my soaking wet shoes, listening to the girls best friend, Danny, who is also class president and Valedictorian, give a beautiful speech to the class. He tells them, that after 13 years of being together, that this will be the last time in their lives that they will all be together in one place. He tells them that this event is another thing that they will be able to cross off the "Bucket List of Life". I choke up, as this observation is both profound as it is true. The class of 2012 is announced to the audience and we go back out to our car, and bump into Jeff and have him recount how close he came to whacking Matt. We make light of it, with Jeff promising to leave his business card on Matt's body next time. After all, he is a lawyer. Then we're off to dinner.

We are all sitting in the restaurant. We're all having a wonderful time toasting and eating and suddenly there is a lull in the conversation. I look at my mother in law, who is in treatment for pancreatic cancer and at my dad, who ended up in hospital with pancreatitis, and I wonder is "Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic" or is life one long "Bucket List" or are they all really the same thing? Or am I getting way to intense, due to this big life transition?

But in any case, as I squish around in my shoes and clothes in a now very cold air conditioned room and the one thing I am sure of is if there is a god, I must be his punch line. Seriously. I have given this much contemplation and I'm pretty sure he looks at me and laughs. But hey, I am sure he does the same thing to most of you from time to time. At least we're all at this picnic together.