Fade Out

     All the people, about half a hundred, gathered together to extend their best wishes and support.  All engaged in dining, drinking, dancing and conversation, with no regard to the truth that this certain assemblage of people  would never come together again.  All the dances danced, all the words spoken, all the joy and celebration in existence for the present time only, enclosed in a capsule of time, leaking out now and then in small remnants of what we call memory.