Mary said they’d discontinued her makeup, and I said the things we liked seemed always to be discontinued, like the fleecy warm-up pants I just had had sewn, and which I’ll wear every day now until the end of eternity.

And, yes, not to sound too morose a note, our lives will be discontinued as well, and to prepare I’ve begun hauling my regrets to the dump to be deposited in the far corner with corrosive things unfit for recycling. 

Montaigne said that if you’d lived a while by the time death came you were pretty much dead anyway, so there really wasn’t much to it. Meanwhile he continued planting his cabbages, as I do too in a way if you consider what a wonderful compost heap could be made of my outpourings. 

Speaking of compost, we had to get rid of ours — just as was the case with my regrets — because rats, we thought, were delighting in it, as they evidently also were with the birdseed on the ground. I caught onetwothreejustlikethat in a Havahart trap, and felt very proud of myself, much as O’en does when he’s strutting ahead of me with a stick between his teeth.

Discontinuing the bird feeding has deprived us of colorful and compelling company, though I guess it had to be done, at least for a while.

Meanwhile, divested of regrets for the time being, I can, perhaps like the rats in the compost, spend more time delighting in transitory things, in the woodsmoke scent of Mary’s hair, in her warmth and laughter, and in the golden light at the end of summer days, in the memory of the proud tilt of a little wren’s head, and in O’en’s black eyes.

For, in the end, that’s it! That’s all there is, folks.

Two young women, Mormons as I learned, appeared at our door one late afternoon recently, and they were very pleasant even though I confessed I was no longer a churchgoer, which, of course, did not mean, I said, that I did not have a spiritual side.

What were we here for if not to help one another, I said, adding that, for me at least, the rest remained a mystery, though I did tend to side with my wife’s pantheism. 

(The inner wise guy suggested I tell them that cleanliness was next only to godlessness in the Hamptons, but I held my tongue.)

And did they know, by the way, that Joseph Campbell (with whom they were not familiar) had discovered that the myths in which many of us still believe, including the one about a divine mother and a resurrected son, were not only shared by all civilizations, but dated back thousands of years, long before Christ? 

They gave me a book outlining God’s plan for me and their card. I thanked them. The neighborhood, I said, was about half year round, half summer. We shook hands, said goodbye, and they walked away, to knock at another door, and I went back to wondering what it was all about, before remembering that I should shuck the corn for dinner.

What was it the Zen monk said? “Miraculous power and marvelous activity — drawing water and hewing wood!” 

Or shucking corn. 

It is one of summer’s gifts, a gift of Demeter, goddess of the cornfield, who would have forbidden it and the fruit and herbs to grow had not Zeus agreed to let her daughter, Per­sephone, spend nine months of the year with her on earth and three in the company of her abductor, Hades. 

All in all a good deal, you’ll agree, so let’s shuck it while we can. 

My own best debate story came to mind on Monday as I watched Lester Holt try to wrangle Donald Trump into answering a question about a previous statement regarding Hillary Clinton’s looks. Mr. Trump would not answer, and I wondered what was going through Mr. Holt’s mind at that awkward moment.

I had been a guest moderator for the League of Women Voters of the Hamptons at a Westhampton Beach discussion two years ago between Tim Bishop and Lee Zeldin. Joe Shaw, the editor of The Press Newsgroup in Southampton, was the other moderator, and we decided to meet for an early dinner at Starr Boggs. 

Not that I like to write about my health, but for the sake of this story, it is important to explain that I have a severe allergy to red meat. This diagnosis, increasingly made here on the East End, is of an allergic condition thought to be triggered in some people by the bite of a Lone Star tick. My first attack came in about 1991, making me, as far as I know, Patient Zero, at least in this part of the country.

Generally, I order carefully in restaurants, but on that night, I just asked for the fish and did not explain to the server that I could not have anything with meat in it.

Dinner was fine. The conversation was good. But about halfway through my entree I noticed that my lips were beginning to tingle just a bit.

I made it through the debate, though by the last 15 minutes, the back of my neck had begun to itch, another sign of what was to come. As Mr. Bishop and Mr. Zeldin made their final pitches, I was running through the options. I had left my Epi-Pen kit and allergy pills at home. I did not know the area. I was definitely about to turn visibly red and start having trouble breathing.

Then, the debate was over. I whispered to Joe Shaw that I had to run and headed to the door. A Southampton Town cop keeping an eye on things was at the back of the auditorium; I asked him if there was a 24-hour pharmacy nearby. There was, but at the very moment I turned to race to my car, Mr. Bishop appeared in my path eager to reiterate a point.

What else can you do when a member of Congress has something to say? I listened. Thinking about it now makes my scalp start to itch all over again. Eventually, Mr. Bishop was through, and I headed to Rite Aid, bought some Benadryl, and started the long drive home. Just how the debate had gone that night I had no idea.

I never quite realized I was one of those people who loves throwing things out. When I was growing up, I had this relative who enjoyed “chucking” this and that — that’s how she would refer to it. It always seemed so odd to me that she seemed to get a euphoric feeling just by placing something she considered a piece of garbage in the trash. Euphoria might not be quite how I would describe it, but, damn, purging does feel good. 

While I am not a fan of clutter, I am a bit nostalgic, so I am a bit surprised by my recent need to get rid of what I just do not need. 

In recent weeks, I have been tossing the never used, no longer needed, worn out, meaningless, and downright junky items I seem to have collected over the years. Candles that have become dust collectors, workout gear not part of my routine, and old makeup are just some of the items that have found their way into a Dumpster. I had enough vases, saved from floral deliveries, that I could have started my own flower shop. Why did I hold onto two baskets that would be perfect for an Easter egg hunt if I had children? Shoes that are no longer my style and a mound of T-shirts I received from my various races were all donated, of course. 

Despite my lack of abilities and plain disinterest in cooking, the kitchen was a treasure trove of trash: stained potholders and aprons, chip­ped dishes, a plethora of containers, many without the right-size lids or lids without the right-size containers. I got a bit angry when I came across parts of the ice cream maker, once used. I wanted to give it away to someone who might appreciate it, but with the main container missing, I chucked it. A week later I found the part in the freezer, in plain view. 

What about the CD collection? My husband wanted to know. No one listens to CDs anymore, he said. I told him most are classics, mostly ’90s hip-hop. Nas’s “Illmatic” and Lil’ Kim’s “Hard Core” got packed up carefully for our upcoming move. He thinks I will be carrying those boxes. 

I have a pile of old letters and cards that I kept for one reason or another. I started paring this down too. It was time for some letters from an old flame to go and also some birthday cards that I couldn’t figure out why I had kept. There were some I couldn’t give up: some notes from my parents, a birthday card from my grandmother (nothing special, but it was the last she sent), a thank-you note from a patient. I came across a nice surprise when I found a card from my friend Amy’s mother that she had sent when my grandmother passed away suddenly. She and I had only met that very weekend, but she was just that kind of lady. I texted Amy a photo of it. “How great is that?” she wrote back. Her mother has been gone six months now. 

So, yes, many things remain, but I think I’m getting better at identifying what’s truly meaningful. The rest I can chuck. 

Taylor K. Vecsey is The Star’s digital media editor. 

A lithe, strong man drove a Mack truck into the backyard on Tuesday, delivering a 30-yard Dumpster. I didn’t have a notion about what a 30-yard Dumpster was or how it would look, although we have had what I think is a 2-yard version in the yard for quite some time. 

Wishing my youngest grandchildren were around to see the driver maneuver, I stood watching and smiling as he got out of the truck, threw some detritus out of the way, and then turned the behemoth this way and that until he could lower the Dumpster to the ground. He was so efficient that he drove off before I could say thank you.

Stalwart Star readers may recall that we had a big yard sale not terribly long ago, with the objective of emptying the oldest part of our family barn so that it could be taken down, restored, and reassembled on the Mulford Farm — just across Main Street — by the East Hampton Historical Society. We’ve been anticipating this for some five years now, and are relieved that the time has finally come. The workmen say the barn will be gone by mid-October.

The barn has been the backdrop to our lives for as long as we can remember. It’s where we stored our old iceboats, ice skates, and hand-me-down antique wooden sleds; bicycles by the dozen, and the huge, stage-set holiday-parade floats that were built for The East Hampton Star over the years. More than one generation of teenager has hidden in the hayloft to do the secret things that teenagers do. Under the floorboards, long ago, my children found ancient marbles, lost by other children in the 1930s. Once, a horse lived in the lone stall, but nothing’s lived there in at least 50 years (unless you count castoff yard furniture). 

There must be an axiom to the effect that empty spaces always fill up. It’s entropy, I guess: Not everything went at the barn sale, and some of the clumsiest and heaviest things — including an old wood and coal-burning Kalamazoo kitchen stove, last used in the 1970s by my late mother-in-law, and some huge old barrels — haven’t yet found a home. In the meantime, various other bits and bobs of furniture have drifted in. 

The barn is said to be the only one left in the village that not only has its original huge beams but has not been reconfigured in any way. Its time is now or never: The roof has a swayback, and the shingles are a disgrace. My daughter has vaguely suggested that perhaps we should throw a goodbye square dance in the barn, for sentimental reasons, but I’m not at all sure the floor is sound enough for that. The family is delighted that it will be preserved, of course, but I have to admit I hadn’t quite come to grips with how much work bidding it goodbye would take on our end. 

The historians at the society call it “the Hedges barn,” because it was built by that family, although it has been in the Edwards-Rattray family for around a century, as far as I know. E.J. Edwards, my grandchildren’s great-great-grandfather, opened Edwards Lane — a narrow drive that runs between the library and the Star office building — in the early 20th century and moved the barn from its site near Main Street to where it sits today. Another, newer section of the barn was constructed in the decades that followed, but the historical society isn’t taking that (and I am rather hoping it will be able to absorb some of the remaining items that will now need a new home). 

Over the next two weeks, various family members will haul out what remains, and cart the best of it to new homes: a 1950s linoleum-topped kit­chen table, a glass-front cabinet with peeling veneer, various huge trunks, fishing tackle. . . . Maybe we can convince the historical society to take a barrel or farm implement or two. 

Does anyone know anyone who would want to restore a wood-and-coal stove? It’s yours, if you can cart it.

With my kids in school once again and summer’s end this week, I have had a nagging sense of urgency about getting everything in. 

Adelia, the oldest, has been away at boarding school since before Labor Day, and, anyway, for her, summer was all about hanging out with friends when she was not working in a juice shop in town. She is a teenager but not old enough to have a driver’s license, which meant her interactions with her parents centered mostly on getting her to and from places, as opposed to sharing activities. 

I tell parents of younger children how soon it will be that their babies will be ready to learn from the world rather than from them. For the most part, they react with disbelief. No matter; they will learn soon enough that by the time their children are 14 or so, much of our work already will have been done. I see this now with Evvy, who is 12 and becoming rapidly more independent, though she still howls from upstairs when she is thirsty and needs a drink of water, for example.

Ellis, at 6, can read and do all sorts of things for himself, but he is still at an age during which his parents are the largest part of his universe. While Adelia is off at school doing who knows what with her friends and Evvy is in her room working on a craft project, Ellis is still willing to do things with me, like go fishing. And that gives me endless pleasure. Sunday was a day to get out on the boat together, and we invited my old friend Geoff Morris along. 

Geoff and I had been out at Gardiner’s Island the day before, tangling with false albacore and then porgy fishing. He had caught two very small sand sharks, which, after I made my report at home, drove Ellis nuts. He had to catch one of his own, which he did the following day.

The strong west wind that morning compelled us to motor up into the lee of the bluffs at Cedar Point, where we drifted out successively toward deeper water. Ellis got his shark and a number of porgies, though all the big ones that we had found earlier in the season appeared to have moved on. 

It was a successful day, but for me as a dad, the best thing was when Ellis said he wanted to do it again tomorrow.

Standing on the ocean beach in Montauk with East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cant­well on Tuesday, the question was why the downtown waterfront strip is the way it is. High waves from Hermine, a post-tropical cyclone by the time it passed Long Island last week, had eaten away almost all the fill that a United States Army Corps of Engineers contractor had placed there in the spring. As we looked over the damage, Larry pointed out that the sand level was more or less back where it had been when the corps project began.

The idea behind the $9.8 million undertaking was to bolster the shoreline for a time in the hope that the Army Corps would return some day with a more permanent solution. Now, it seems that is not going to happen. The corps has said it will commit only to putting more sand on the beach every four years. This is, of course, demonstrably idiotic — the work its contractor finished just in June is already beginning to fail.

But the failures go back much further than the Army Corps, in fact, to the earliest days of Montauk’s development. In the 1920s, Carl Fisher had grand plans for a “distinguished summer colony on the slender tip of Long Island.” Plans called for a boardwalk the length of the downtown, but even Fisher and his big dreams showed a bit of sense where the shore was concerned. 

An artist’s rendering of what was to come had little in the way of buildings along the ocean beach itself and most of the substantial structures well inland. This restraint may have stemmed from personal experience. Fisher’s properties in Florida took heavy damage from a hurricane in 1926, a storm that was credited with ending a real estate boom that had been running for several years. On the other hand, since it was believed at the time that devastating hurricanes did not reach Long Island, Fisher might have thought Montauk development was a safer bet.

Financial troubles ended Fisher’s plans here, and the stock market crash and Great Depression more or less froze Montauk in time. Then the 1938 Hurricane rolled across Long Island on Sept. 21 of that year, as if to emphasize that development on the shore made no sense. The lesson was forgotten a generation later.

By the early 1960s, building returned to the oceanfront in Montauk and along the length of Long Island. People forgot the obvious: that erosion was inevitable. Local and state government stood by as scores of houses, motels, and other buildings were placed exactly where they should not have been. This is evident when you stand on the Montauk beach today.

The question, going forward, is whether anyone from Washington to Town Hall has the ability to guide us to a sensible step back. Managed retreat, they call it, but so far, those are just words.

Why are there Russian teenagers wearing $700 down parkas on the popcorn line at the East Hampton Cinema?

I walked over to the movie theater on Main Street the other night thinking about high blood pressure, and how I ought to exercise more, and nearly blew a gasket when the ticket-taker told me he had to search my bag. 

“Are you serious?” I asked. “What for?” 

“For guns,” he said, gesturing like his hand was a pistol: “Guns.” 

“Are you serious?” 

I turned from the ticket-taker to the suited guy in the booth for confirmation. “Is he serious?” 

“He’s serious. It’s company policy.” 

The ticket-taker poked around in my floral cinch-top bucket bag for a concealed weapon. “Not guns here, so much, but guns other places,” he said. “It’s Regal Cinema’s national policy.” 

“Really?” I said, looking pointlessly around at the Russian teenagers for sup port. “I’m still upset that you don’t sell Peanut Chews anymore — and now you have to search our bags for guns?” 

The man in the ticket booth gave a quizzical nod of empathy. 

I continued to protest: “I’m still upset that when you phone 324-0448 you don’t hear the recorded movie times anymore . . . and now you’re searching our bags for guns?” The guy in the booth shrugged, gave a weak smile, and turned away. 

Obviously, they are not as sentimental as I am at the East Hampton Cinema about phone numbers and Peanut Chews. I moved home from Nova Scotia last year, after seven or eight living in Canada, and have spent the last 18 months complaining about changes around town, much to the irritation of my children. 

I feel like Rip Van Winkle. 

What happened to the red rosebushes on the fence at Odd Fellows Hall (a.k.a. Gordon Peavy’s dance studio, a.k.a. Eileen Fisher)? How did they become so meager?

The matching, velvety-red roses on the fence at the train station? I can guess what happened to those ones: The evergreens someone planted to “beautify” the space parallel to the platform grew so tall while I was away in Canada that the rosebushes no longer get enough sun. The train-station-fence roses are a frail shadow of their former glory. Who is in charge of the roses? Can I write a letter to someone?

When did people start calling the East Hampton Town Board the “town council”?

Am I the only one who is unhappy with the newfangled Halloween ritual of marching children store to store for trick-or-treating instead of letting them run (somewhat) wild and (relatively) unchaperoned through darkened neighborhoods?

I have accustomed myself to the sight of the men and women in pseudo-Moroccan caftans or Vilebrequin swim trunks who whiz down the street on bicycles or skateboards as they simultaneously fiddle with their phones, eyes down, but I do worry I will run one of them over with my car.

The parking lots at the ocean beaches this summer were, predictably, even more crowded than they were eight years ago, but, weirdly, the water was emptier. Why aren’t there more swimmers? Do people only swim in pools nowadays?

Furthermore, where is the white corn?

Winston Churchill — supposedly — said, “If you’re not a liberal when you’re 25, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative by the time you’re 35, you have no brain.” I have to admit I must be middle-aged now. I will never be conservative politically, but I’m a radical conservative when it comes to preservation of any sort, even of things like Peanut Chews, the natural-born right of Americans to jaywalk, and telephone area codes.

I’d like to turn back time to the summers when small children didn’t wear string bikinis. A functional one-piece maillot or, for the very-very young, just running naked at the beach was better. The weekend after Labor Day, I saw a mite of about 5 or 6 wearing tiny bikini bottoms with no top other than a peekaboo white-crochet halter: the Kim Kardashian look for the kindergarten set.

Does this make me a curmudgeon?

The caste system out here has definitely gotten more entrenched — the class divide more shocking — since I left the country in 2009. I mean, have you ever seen so many Maseratis in your life? Are all these new Euro summer people shipping them over for the season on freighters, or what? My children, in July, took to counting them as we sat in traffic, en route to day camp: two Maseratis where the bowling alley used to be, a vintage DeLorean near where the horses used to graze at Hardscrabble, a Bugatti here, a Lamborghini there. . . .

In a Sag Harbor home-goods store, a few weeks ago, I noticed a set of highly expensive throw pillows with screen prints of Masai warriors’ faces as a decorative motif. People’s exoticized “ethnic” likenesses as an interior-decoration pattern: That’s not just bad taste, that’s a whole other level of . . . something not good. Obtuseness about our own privileges, maybe?

Because I cannot end this short essay on a grinch-like note, I will now press myself to admit that not all the changes I’ve noticed since my return home are entirely bad. Some of them are actually good.

I’m glad the public in general is finally talking about beach-access rights.

And our food, for instance, has gotten even better. It’s spectacular, really. Farm stands have proliferated; that’s beautiful to see. I cannot understand who is buying $10 single servings of bottled juice at Citarella — 10 dollars? really? for a single-serve watermelon juice? — but I practically swooned when I found smoked, locally caught bluefish salad in Amagansett not long ago.

True, I haven’t heard the cry of a single whippoorwill since I got back from Canada, but there were far more fireflies flashing and beaming in my yard all August than there ever were before. The pleasant chorus of insects at night is far, far louder than it used to be, too — are those cicadas?

I can’t get behind the chic-ifying of the Old Stove Pub, but I’m so glad the luncheonette at the Poxabogue golf course hasn’t changed, and that the Candy Kitchen in Bridgehampton hasn’t changed an iota, either. The only thing at the Candy Kitchen that has altered over the last decade is the ketchup dispenser: It used to be the pointy-ended squeeze-bottle kind, with which you could apply a smiley face to your hamburger patty. Do you remember? The squeeze bottle. I miss that.

Bess Rattray is a freelance writer and editor for The Star’s East magazine whose work has appeared in Vogue, Vogue.com, Bookforum, ELLE, and Salon.com.

The editorial staff at The Star, who share the responsibility of gathering information for and writing obituaries, consider it a high calling. It has been our mission to portray each life of someone in this community as fully as possible, and, over the years, our obituaries — be they of a person of renown or someone known only to those near to them — have achieved significant recognition. We feel bad if we are unable to present a decent portrait of someone who has lived among us and died. 

Novice reporters often have to steel themselves when making phone calls to the bereaved, afraid to intrude or say the wrong thing, but the discomfort is usually only on their end: A family member or friend is often quite comfortable answering questions, and even gratified to share memories and let the world know more.

One of the challenges of obituary-writing is that the cause of death has traditionally been a basic element that must be included in the story, and that discussion can be a tricky one. Sometimes a reference to no more than a short or long illness suffices; at other times an immediate cause, such as an accident, is necessary. As a matter of journalistic ethics, we cannot simply leave out a cause of death, in most instances, but the extent to which it is described publicly depends on how the bereaved feel about it. They may not want it known when the cause of death is suicide or, more commonly, an unusual illness. I’ve been around long enough to remember when some families felt there was a stigma attached to admitting that someone had died of cancer. The more recent tendency to avoid acknowledging Alzheimer’s or AIDS — yes, sadly, still — seems to have eclipsed that concern.

But when is it appropriate to leave out a cause of death of someone who was among the very elderly? That is another delicate issue. Writing that someone died of “natural causes” is a clichéd and rather euphemistic way of avoiding the words “old age.” The latter doesn’t sound very nice, though, does it? 

Some members of the staff think all we have to do is choose an age, 90, for example, after which it is no longer necessary to include the cause of death. I argue otherwise. I reply that I have a 92-year-old friend who is more robust than I, and that it would be unfortunate to simply assume her cause of death was no longer a part of her life story.

The advent of technology has had a salutary effect on all this. Many people find it a bit easier to commit information to a computer and it send along via email, rather than in conversation. We also send out a form that helps organize the task for anyone who asks. There are pitfalls to this updated process, of course: Once a family member or friend has put a life into words, in filling out this form, they are not always pleased to see their words altered or paraphrased during the editing process (as a life story is made to conform to the necessary rules governing newspapering).

What I want to tell you is that we do our best when writing obituaries, and I hope to encourage people to feel free to provide as many details as they wish when telling us about a life lost. We, all of us, lead lives of richness and interest; there’s no such thing as an average life. All this is worth thinking about, I believe; after all, we will all be among those on the pages, someday.

Had I met Larry Brown at the pickup games the other night, I would, had I not been barred at the gates — “No media,” they said, though, looking about, it seemed I was the sole medium around — have told him that were he to coach here I intended to become the legal guardian of our 10 and 7-year-old basketball-crazed grandsons who live in Perrysburg, Ohio.

The more the merrier, I say. After all, we’ve got a puppy who, in dog terms, will approach their ages in little more than a year. It would enliven the house, whose upstairs, while beautifully appointed now, is unoccupied. And there’s a Ping-Pong table in the basement that’s looking lonely.

Puppies keep you on your toes, and so do grandchildren. It occurs to me, however, that it will be hard to train O’en out of jumping up if Jack and Max, in going for the hoop, which, of course, we’d put outside, are always doing so.

A friend of my daughter’s, one who’s around my age, told Emily during a recent visit to Sewickley, Pa., that her kids reminded her of me at their age, though while I can lay claim to having been as athletic (my mother said I was running at 9 months), they, as I think is the case with all eight of my grandchildren, are smarter. I can do letters, but not numbers, which, of course, is why I was entrusted to do the budget stories for this paper in the past, and why I’m wondering if I’ve counted correctly. A ninth grandchild — I think I have it right — is to arrive in February.

The puppy has already outgrown the crate we had, and in bringing a bigger one upstairs this morning — on loan from a co-worker, Kathleen— I said to Greg, who was helping me, that O’en might be easier to look after in the office than at home — because we hadn’t taught him to read yet. 

Seriously, if Larry Brown becomes East Hampton High’s boys basketball coach, won’t this place become a lodestone for young relations, however distant the bloodline and however far-flung, who love shooting hoops?

The dribbling tide might put a strain on the school systems, but it could well revivify East Hampton’s aging population. It would get the blood flowing again.

Or maybe puppies alone will suffice.