A week ago tomorrow my brother Terry sang Van Morrison’s “Into The Mystic” to about 300 bereaved Irish-Catholics and their various variations on that ill-gotten theme at St. Leonard’s of Port Maurice, a tiny church in South Minneapolis that hosts a seder dinner during Lent and is run by pastor from the congo; a jubilant African cat named Father Jules.

After he sang his song, my brother handed me his guitar and his guitar pick. I played “A Question For Pat Dwyer At Grumpy’s In Northeast Minneapolis,” which I wrote for a bartender buddy of mine. I’d been singing it all week for my cousin Pat Hanna of Minneapolis and Las Vegas, who died of blood poisoning a couple weeks ago and whose life we were there to celebrate.

Before the service, a bunch of bikers were smoking heaters with a cluster of my cousins in front of the church, making it look not unlike the outside of a smoke-free bar before last call. My cousin Janie was on her cell phone to the hospital, trying to get some information about her ailing dad, my uncle Joe, whose wife, my aunt Jane, was inside the church looking frail but batty-beautiful, the way all the Irish women in my family look.

The idiom “dropping like flies” has its origin in the early 19^th century story “The Brave Tailor” by the Brothers Grimm, in which a child kills flies with a belt. The phrase first appeared in a story about a fire in The Atlanta Constitution newspaper in May of 1902. These days it applies to all sorts of soldiers and casualties and my mother’s side of the family. I’m losing track of all the funerals we’ve been to in the last few months, but we’re getting good at it.

Saturday, my cousin Denny gave the second eulogy for his second deceased brother in a matter of months. Denny made everyone laugh and cry. In the church basement after the service, he and I stood by the food table trying to get a grip on what it all means. When I wished a friend of the family a happy 85^th birthday, the man said, “It was last week. The whole place sang `Happy birthday’ to me at dialysis.”

I sat next to my mom and ate my ham sandwich and poked at my cole slaw and looked around the room. Bikers dined with priests, alcoholics with sobers, believers with atheists, infirms with athletes, young with old. Before I left, my brothers and I made plans to jam with my dead cousin Tommy’s son Brian, who sang “Let It Be” with his kid brother at their father’s funeral a few months ago.

My Aunt Muggs was stoic and shell-shocked and even smart-alecky through it all, having buried a husband and two sons in short order. My mom tells me that on Tuesday, two days after her son’s funeral, my aunt showed up to do her part at Loaves and Fishes, the feed-the-poor program at St. Stephens church.

Saturday night, a few hours after we all left the church, my brother’s band played at Lee’s Liquor Lounge in downtown Minneapolis, where the neon lights were shining and a couple of wedding parties had descended to dance to Clash and Van Morrison songs. I sat in the back of the bar and nursed a Jameson’s and watched all the people flirting and bellowing to the owner/bartender, Louie, who lost his wife recently.

Just after midnight I found myself on stage, wedged between my older brother Jay and my younger brother Terry, both wielding Telecasters, as we sang “Gloria” and “Rockin’ All Over The World.” All the day’s words about not taking anything for granted were fresh in our ears and I admit that as I sang I wondered what my two cousins Matt and Denny were doing and why we were here singing and they were off somewhere mourning their brothers.

Our cousin Natalie, whose father Danny was killed in a car accident years ago and inspired my brother Terry’s song “The Greatest Mystery,” had a baby this week, Abigail Rose. This is her picture.

This Saturday, I’m going to a birthday party of an old friend. It’s at a VFW in Richfield. Should be a wild time, what with all that celebrating and cocktail-talk about the latest depressing snow storm and how it’s supposed to finally be sunny this week, and if anyone’s got a better ending to this than that I’d like to hear it.