The Fog of Loss

Mission Hills. Autumn time just begun, and the Hermit Philosopher is writing in his den. Things are bleak in the house. There’s fog everywhere. Virtual fog.  Fog in the valley, where the river trickles to the bay. Fog on the ocean as sailboats dance with aircraft carriers. Fog shrouding the bridge to Coronado and the animals at the zoo. Fog in his condo and in his mind. It is the fog of grief. He has lost a dear, dear friend.

She and he were in college together. Law school too. They communed together – were intimately involved – on perhaps half a dozen occasions over the years. Each time was better than the time before. He loved her dearly.

But recently the friend began to come apart with age. Her skin turned brownish and flakey. Her spine was bent. She was literally falling apart at the seams.

The decline started right after Mr. Tulkinghorn died. He was a lawyer ­– a murder victim, you might recall – and his death precipitated a crisis among some of his most prominent clients. The HP’s friend was a major part of that story. In fact, she was that story. It was only because of her that anyone has ever heard of Mr. Tulkinghorn, his crusty old client Lester Dedlock, or the seminal case of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, which case grubbed on for generations in the chancery courts and was the great misfortune of so many suitors.

As if that were not enough trouble, poor Jo died and Mrs. Dedlock disappeared when disgraced and suspected – wrongly – of the lawyer’s murder. (The maid did it.) Mrs. D’s daughter, Esther, went searching for her but found her dead at the gravesite of her former lover, Esther’s father. About that time Lester had a stroke, Esther contracted smallpox, and her cousin Richard died of tuberculosis.

With all this sorrow, the HP’s friend had the dickens of a time, becoming more and more frail and finally expiring just last week. The HP visited her to say good-bye and extract all the memories he could. The fog-enshrouded thoughts of many years that had been marginally recorded are now saved like flies in amber, every line rewritten and preserved for a newer, stronger lover. One with a robust back and clearer skin. Heavier, perhaps, but fit for many more trysts.

Thanks go to Charles John Huffam Dickens (1812-1870) for his literary masterpiece and to Signet Classics for my frail paperback friend. 

Thanks also to Scholar Select Books for scanning and reproducing – in hardback form – a library copy of the 1885 edition of Bleak House, which sits proudly on my bookshelf in Dewey Decimal System category 823 (English Fiction) alongside A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, and others. ■