An importand day...(far more than my slow crawl toward death)

Finnegans Wake was published on this day in 1939.

I am passing out. O bitter ending! I'll slip away before they're up. They'll never see. Nor know. Nor miss me. And it's old and old it's sad and old it's sad and weary I go back to you, my cold father, my cold mad father, my cold mad feary father, till the near sight of the mere size of him, the moyles and moyles of it, moananoaning, makes me seasilt saltsick and I rush, my only, into your arms, I see them rising! Save me from those therrble prongs! Two more. Onetwo moremens more. So. Avelaval. My leaves have drifted from me. All. But one clings still. I'll bear it to me. To remind me of. Lff! So soft this morning, ours. Yes. Carry me along, taddy, like you done through the toy fair! If I seen him bearing down on me now under whitespread wings like he'd come from Arkangels, I sink I'd die down over his feet, humbly dumbly, only to washup. Yes, tid. There's where. First. We pass through grass behush the bush to. Whish! A gull. Gulls. Far calls. Coming, far! End here. Us then. Finn, again! Take. Bussoftlhee, mememormee! Till thousendsthee. Lps. The keys to. Given! A way a lone at last a loved a long the
~James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, 1939, IV

I read FW for the first time when I was about 15 at my Grandfather's mildly malicious suggestion. I wrote a book report about it, using (to the best of my stunted ability) Joyce's language and cyclical style. Years later the English teacher I wrote it for told me that they had read the first two pages, understood *what* I had done, but didn't understand any of it...gave me an A+ and moved on. Somewhere, it is still kicking around...I need to find it and see if it is as horrid as I think it probably was...

I quoted the above (near the end of the novel) because it so summed up my grandfather's death. My grandfather was a lay Joyce scholar (born and raised in Belfast, Ireland and a great lover of Irish lit.). He woke one morning, did not wake my grandmother. He went into the kitchen and got a glass from the cabinet, got poured himself a glass of orange juice and returned the container to the fridge. He sat down at the kitchen table and died. My grandmother woke a hour or so later, went into the kitchen and found my grandfather sitting at the table with a full glass of juice in front of him, dead. Leave it to my grandfather to have such a wonderfully Joycean death.

Carry me along, taddy, like you done through the toy fair!