The disastrous year 2003

Every year, for me this day (June 5th) is one of the most emotionally difficult days of the year; it’s my man Jacques Transue’s death day, in the bright early summer of what unfolded as the disastrous year 2003. Jacques died, after all those years of withering through dementia to death; I was crazed with grief (actually, I still am, it never went away, though the sharpest edges have worn down some, they would have had to); and then in November the flesh-eating bacteria came for me, and I just barely survived their onslaught, coming out disabled and disfigured, with almost all of my previous life gone. Mozart’s disastrous year was 1791 — it’s chronicled in H. C. Robbins Landon’s 1791: Mozart’s Last Year (1988) — and ended with his death in the dark winter, but also embraced great triumphs, notably Die Zauberflöte. (More on Mozart’s last year below.) I can’t tell you much about 2003 between Js death in June and the appearance of a painful swelling in my right armpit in November. It’s…