"Fall" makes me reflect too much
The days get cooler, leaves slip silently to the ground, the lush grass grows stiff and brown. In the clear skies of East Texas, I can see the wide, fluid V of different species of birds heading to their winter homes.
Our senior cat, Felix, is nearly 20 years old. He’s getting thinner, eating less, but always happy to sit on our laps, and just purr at the joy of being with me, my wife, my son, even my mother-in-law.
But he won’t be part of our family much longer, and that will be the closing of another small but significant chapter in our lives.
I look at that old typewriter, and it reminds me of stories written and long discarded. Of places I’ve been and to where I’ve never returned. Of all the men I’ve been and especially those I hope never to be again. Finally (and this is odd, I know), I see the friends and loved ones who have been lost, or who will soon be.
It’s an expected part of growing up, I suppose, but rarely welcomed. That season when people begin dying. And with each death, a small piece of me, that portion shaped and molded by knowing or loving them, is lost, as well. Not gone, exactly, but no longer a part of me that will grow and nourish us both.
I have a confession that will make some people twitch. I believe in God, and an afterlife. Read a lot about NDEs, and the “life review.”
See, I have questions for The Boss. In the past few years, whenever one of these profound issues occurs to me, I make a mental statement, and say “Bookmark,” hoping that will make it stand out during my life review, so we can discuss it.
I think my first bookmark was “what color were the dinosaurs?” But they are deeper than that, like “What purpose does cancer serve?”
Stuff like that. As I see friends slip away through accident or illness, or occasionally their own hand, I recognize there is so little I really know.
And as standard operating procedures go, I think Bill and Ted had it right:
“Be Excellent To Each Other.”
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