January 13, 2005
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Hope of Heaven
“Heaven is a state,
a sort of metaphysical state.”
– John O’Hara, Hope of Heaven, 1938“The old men know
when an old man dies.”
– Ogden NashSee also the five Log24 entries
ending with the 9 PM entry of
Tuesday, December 10, 2002.From today’s New York Times:
“Joseph S. Frelinghuysen, whose memoir, Passages to Freedom, chronicled
his escape from a prison camp in Italy during World War II, died on
Saturday in Morristown, N.J. He was 92.”A web page on the Indiantown Gap army camp quotes Frelinghuysen’s Passages to Freedom… He is describing July 1942, just before Frelinghuysen’s unit was sent overseas:
“In the last week of July, his wife
Emily came to Indiantown to stay at the old Hershey
Hotel so they could steal a few of the remaining hours
together. He explained, ‘On my last night with Emily,
she wore an evening dress with a full green and rose
colored skirt, and I put on my best garrison uniform
…. we had California champagne, lobster, and flaming
crepes with ice cream. We danced to some old tunes; Cole
Porter’s ‘Night and Day’ and Irving Berlin’s tunes from
‘Top Hat.’ Then they played a new one slowly, and a
young girl sang the lyrics to ‘The White Cliffs of
Dover.’ Noting that England had been at war for three
years, he reminisced that it was a song that speaks of
‘love and laughter’ and ‘peace ever after.’
Nostalgically, he said, ‘We finished the dance in an
embrace. She took my hand and we walked out through the
lobby onto the terrace for a last look at the gardens in
the pale light of a quarter moon.’ ““Darkness and light,the old man thought.
It is what every hero legend is about.
The darkness which is more than death,
the light which is love….”