Saying I share your loss shouldn’t be very complicated, even in a world like this

                        
Amy Vanderbilt wrote the book on etiquette, which is kind of like saying Bruce Springsteen’s the Boss. It’s a simple, unalterable fact of life. But fashions change and seasons shift and it’s possible that in a generation or two, no one will even remember Springsteen, though I doubt it. Still, van Gogh died penniless and there was a time when women authors had to adopt masculine pseudonyms in order to get their work published. Who can imagine tomorrow’s whims? But don’t some things remain the same? Which is why I had to consult “Amy Vanderbilt’s Complete Book of Etiquette” the other night, having received the sad news that the father of a good friend’s wife had died. “How do I address the envelope?” I asked myself. “To whom do I write our note of condolence?” After all, I’d known my friend since junior high school, but his wife has been an important part of our circle of close acquaintances for more than 30 years. She’s the one who makes sure we have a good table at our class reunions. She’s the one who puts up with her husband’s closest friends when we, perhaps, howl at the moon. She’s the one who held the video camera and made sure that our wedding day there on the beach at Kitty Hawk was captured for all time. I consulted my wife -- consumed lately with the imminent birth of her first grandchild -- and she advised me to address the card to both my friend and his wife, which seemed logical, but something felt out of tune to me. I understood her logic but, somewhere in the recesses of my ever-eroding memory, a pebble of possibility fell from a great height and plopped into the puddle of my cerebral cortex. “I must,” I thought, “see what Amy has to say.” Rules of etiquette have, I’m afraid, gone by the wayside in the last few years. Congressmen have no qualms about shouting insults at the president. Big corporations see no shame in laying off thousands of workers while making sure the big bosses pocket tremendous bonuses. The NCAA will do whatever it can to ease Duke’s way into the Final Four. Your computer or your car or your hot-water heater will die a slow, planned death. It’s a world without manners. And that, to me, is all I need to know about tomorrow. It’s going to be worse than today. Far worse. I was thinking those dark thoughts the other night when I consulted Amy Vanderbilt to see how I could best send a letter of condolence to a friend whose father had passed away. And her words of advice -- address sympathy messages to the closest relative to the deceased -- helped staunch the flow of bad blood that’s been surging though my veins for the longest time. “That makes perfect sense,” I thought to myself as the Grateful Dead’s soothing “Box of Rain” cleansed my soul. “Good old Amy’s come through again.” I know it’s dated advice. I realize that the volume in my possession has a 1954 copyright. I understand that bad behavior is largely ungovernable. I get the fact that almost no one’s happy these days. Still, as battered and beleaguered and bent out of shape as we are, oughtn’t we observe a few societal niceties now and again so that we don’t alienate everyone? Ah, I wish it were so, but alas, no one’s listening. Which is why I’ve pretty much closed down what remains of my sanity and retired to the vast recesses of the internal examination of the human condition. I speak to no one. I listen to only my wife. I cling to the music that matters. And I cook and clean, make the bed and collect the garbage, sort through the mail, try not to answer the phone and, whenever it comes on late-night cable, watch “The Breakfast Club,” a movie that never fails to make me feel better about the state of my life. (I identify most strongly with the Judd Nelson character ... especially after a couple of adult beverages.) This is a nasty time, faithful readers, one that sets little stock in the Golden Rule and seems to have adopted a Gordon Gekko approach to the future. Oddly, though, serenity isn’t as distant as you might believe. And it brings us back to Springsteen and a song called “No Surrender,” which is among the best tracks of his 1984 album, Born in the USA. I don’t play that record very often, but when I do, it’s always illuminating. “Bobby Jean” always makes me remember better times and “Glory Days,” well, it’s all too true. But “No Surrender” is a bit more difficult to simplify, speaking as it does to the vast hole in my heart. What good is rebellion, after all, when the deck is stacked against you? I got a haircut last week. Yes, my semiannual trip to the shearing stable and I no longer have shoulder-length locks. Oh, no ... I look -- as the woman who snipped and clipped me observed -- like “a fine Southern gentleman.” Good God. What have I done? My wife hates my new look. I didn’t know until it was too late that her favorite image of me is one that includes snowfall, a streetlight outside a tavern, my father’s Army coat and hair falling well past my collar. And now I look nothing like that. I consulted Amy Vanderbilt for solace, but she had none. In Chapter 19, she offers this nugget: “The well-groomed man never allows his hair to get so shaggy his new haircut is all too apparent.” Once again, it seems, I’ve failed to follow the rules. I don’t care. My hair grows like a weed and, by summer, will be back where it belongs. Mike Dewey can be e-mailed at CarolinamikeD@aol.com or snail-mailed at 6211 Cardinal Drive, New Bern, NC 28560.


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