t’s difficult every year. Saying goodbye to one year while welcoming another. Looking back AND looking ahead. Summing things up, filing away, while making plans…

Dear World, I understand you don't believe in me anymore. I am a figment of the imagination, you say, a charade inflicted upon children. I corrupt youth and inspire greed. You think I am a farce. Ah, but you're wrong. I am neither a figment nor a farce. I am as real as you. In fact, I am you. I am the the best of you.

Fred Bruce, who will be 88 on Jan. 2, doesn’t remember when he started the tradition of bringing poinsettias to the graves of all the people who have meant something to him in his life. Not just family and close friends, but long-ago friends, school friends, work friends, men and women who shared, maybe, for just a short while, some part of his life. “I’ve been doing this since,” he pauses and shakes his head. “God, I can’t remember.” And yet, he remembers names, dates, chronologies, and family histories of people he hasn’t seen in half a century. “Eleanor was the best waitress. We worked together at Howard Johnson’s when I was 21. Her only son, Carl, was murdered in 1969. I watched him grow up. He was a fine, young man. He had small children. He was driving a cab for extra money.”

Every year, he…

The day I turned 50, my father called and said, “I can’t believe I have a daughter who is 50.” It was as if 50 had, just that morning, fallen unexpectedly into his world, like a giant slab of space shuttle debris plummeting out of a clear blue sky. As if my turning 50 hadn’t been preceded by my turning 30 and 40 and 48 and 49. My 50th birthday stunned him. He tried to explain, but couldn’t. There were no words, he said. Speechlessness, for this man, was unusual. He always had something to say. On my 50th birthday he went mute. I held the phone waiting. But all he did was sigh…