Good People

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LET ME UNDERSTAND something to you, if we can take a moment together, spare a little time reaching out as we catch up over coffee because I know we’re all busy, we have things to do, there’s laundry, there’s what to have for dinner, there’s dental hygiene and all the rest, but for now let me say this, please if I may and then I’ll let me go, I promise, you can hold it to me, you can trust me, you know you can trust me, look at my face, see, do you see what I mean by the look on my face, good, I know, because I will swear a blood oath if that’s what you require, I want you to rest assured, I want you totally at ease, listen, I am at ease and you know this, everyone knows this, I aim to please and am only too happy, so if you insist let’s consider it a tontine, yes, good, even if you don’t know what that word means, because what’s a definition anyway, I myself am not defined by words and neither are you, but believe me, it’s a real word, tontine is, I heard it once on TV, an old man said it while weeping, a comrade had died in his arms, in battle on the battlefield, while the bombs were bursting above him, he was there alone and weeping, the dead comrade in his arms, it was all very moving, the naked emotion, the smoldering, wasted landscape, he on his own, aggrieved, bereft, so you know he didn’t make it up, not like that, under those circumstances, but the truth is the truth and it is unavoidable, we can’t put it off any longer, we need to face facts together, as a group, as a family, if you will, because we are a family if you think about it, even if you don’t think about it we are a family, who says you have to think about it to make it so, to make a family, families aren’t ideas and anyone who says so is a liar, like my uncles, they were all of them liars, every…

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