2000:  Hair Today, Gone Forever
2001:  No entry--in England
2002:  Mom Has a Great Day!
2003:  The Other Shoe
2004:  Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here
2005:  Never Say Never
2006:  Flame Wars

THE WAKE
(all the photos can be found and downloaded from here)

13 May 2007

We went to a wake today. 

As wakes go, it wasn't too different from most.  There was lots of food, there was laughter, there were some bittersweet moments.  We saw people we hadn't seen in a very long time, and we all did a lot of reminiscing.  "Remember when..." and "Wasn't it funny when..." and those sorts of things.

The difference with this wake was that the death took place more than a year ago, and the dearly departed was not a person, but a theatre company.

The long-awaited wake for the Davis Comic Opera Co. has finally taken place.  Visible Woman used a perfect word on her site today:  caducity.  Essentially, all good things eventually come to an end!

This sign greeted us as we approached the door to the home where we have had so many DCOC parties in the past 30 years.

When we entered, we were greeted with a sea of familiar faces, faces from as far ago as the first days of DCOC, some faces we may not have seen in more than 20 years.

I was struck with two simultaneous thoughts, the first somewhat depressing ─ how old we all have become; how frail some of us seem to be!  For one thing, when we were younger, we never needed signs like this all over the place!

The second much more happy thought was ─ what an amazing group of people this is, what wonderful things we did, what wonderful relationships have been formed, which withstand the test of time, even if we don't see each other frequently.  I can honestly say that of all the people I know in Davis, by far the best friends we have made (other than the women I have worked with over the years) have come out of this group.

As usual there was lots and lots of food, and more kept coming as the evening wore on.  One thing about a theatre company, it knows how to party well!

Of course there was ham.  This was a wake, after all...!

Mostly we sat or stood around and renewed acquaintances.

Walt had a good conversation with director/actor Gil Sebastian and agreed to help him build the set for his next show, Pirates of Penzance (for a different theatre company). 

Sooner or later, everyone found him/herself gathered around the collection of scrapbooks and other memorabilia that people had brought to share, and play the perennial favorite game, "remember when...?"

We left around 9 p.m. to come home (the party had started at 4...those days when we party into the wee morning hours are long since gone!) and we just felt very good about seeing so many faces that mean so much to us, all gathered together again, for one last time, to say goodbye to an old friend.

(P.S.  To folks like Gil, Craig and Luanne who will probably already read this, I have very few DCOC e-mail addresses; could you please pass the link around?  Thanks!)

PHOTO OF THE DAY

I think this was my very favorite photo of the night:

I wrote a journal entry not too long ago about Dick Brunelle,
the music teacher for the high school.  Roy and Kendra were both his students. 

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