And Now We Are Four

Joseph Edward Crandall, Jr.

1932--2019

Joe is gone.

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ELHEDO, on Lake Moraine,
near Hamilton, NY,1940s

We were Seven,

we Williams, Crandall and Waller kids,

convening summers at ELHEDO Lodge

to swim and play, laugh and laze about.

‘Twas not Algonquin for “place of peace”,

as C.E. invented,
but the initials of our mothers,

his beloved “Taylor Girls”:

Eleanor,

Helen,

Dorothy.

Last time all seven were together, 1999.
Carol and Adrien teasing Lloyd,
Bruce, Joe, Fletch and Allen enjoying
him getting his.

We seven, in time, grew

and went separate ways.

Lloyd was first to pass, the eldest,

leader of the tribe.

In later years he liked to joke that

I was older, I who lived afar

and was too rarely seen;

his way of denying age
in an easy tease.

Carol was next, shockingly

Carol's, painted from a photo of me
in Maine in 1939,
the year she was born.

out of nature's order.

Loving Carol, 

who would enchant wild chickadees

to eat from her hand;

the actress who leaped in fully-clothed

to rescue the clumsy puppy

that plopped into my pool. 

She, who so loved the world

and painted it so charmingly.

How cruelly, how unconscionably 

Lloyd and I picked on

that soft-hearted ten-year-old.

She forgave us, and grew
to take no guff from anyone.

And now Joe turns and goes.

Fletch and Joe
Florida Military Academy, 1948

Stable, solid Joe, so likable;

grantor of unconditional liking in return.

The first responder, 

the fire dispatcher,

the bandsman of crystalline tone. 

His last years spent in a perpetual present,
ELHEDO memories Alzheimer erased.

He passed as peacefully as he had lived,

leaving in his wake 

a huge and loving tribe
(twenty-one great-grands.)

It's true: Joe is gone.

On these short, dark days, Fletch, 

does it ache, to know 

you are an elder -- 

-- and now we are Four?