A friend just contacted me, he lost his wife to cancer. When I was younger I heard the older folks say “ when your number is us, it’s up” I thought how vulnerable that makes us, that many things in life including death were very much out of our control.
It’s not that I dwell, but at times when you least expect it, something, a word, a song, will jar the memory. My mind flashed from my sister laying in the casket and the floral outfit I bought for her to be laid out in, to the last song I heard her sing. The song was called “ treat her gently” and a couple of stanza's in the lyrics stood out in my mind. “ Here we sit, two lonely old people, rocking our life away” how ironic was it that she loved to sing that song, but never would get the experience of watching her children grow and flourish and sit and rock her grandchildren on her lap.
I had read a book some time back a “ conversation with God” and in it I came away with the fact that most things in life is based on choice. Whether we are here a day or thirty years, we have a choice how we will live it.It made me question my own vulnerability and what my purpose on earth was, what would be my legacy? I have quoted many times, that “ I would rather live to be thirty then exist to be a hundred.”
How much in life did fate play and how much was based on choices? I looked around the room, and I saw my restlessness with life. I had felt the bars of the hollow close in on me, to only find that the bars existed in my mind. One by one, I have challenged that which I cannot see, to seek a better understanding of the short time we have on earth.
2 comments:
It is remarkable how a song, an odor, a spool of thread can bring back such vivid memories.
I had to say good-bye to 3 of my brothers.,and we say, they all died before their time...but was it?
I believe that we all have an expiry date..we don't know when we will be recalled.
I have often said to my sons, 'we don't know where we have come from and we don't know where we're going,,,,,but in the meantime, while we're here, we can make a difference, we can leave this world a better place.
There is a old adage: "the squeaky wheel gets the oil." a lamb in silence a wolf shall it bait, but the loudest of the flock,a new day shall it make.
I believe we are not uncommon in our thoughts, it is that most people are passive that want peace? Whether we are talking peace with in the home or a more peaceful world in general. How much stronger we are in unity, then alone.
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