Aging is not all it is cracked up to be. You can't fly a kite that takes a sprint for a lift-off. Some stuff is too heavy when it was a breeze years ago - or so we remember.
9-11 is approaching fast - the 10th anniversary thereof - and so much water has flowed under our bridges since then it is hard to put it together in some perspective other than "my loss". We all felt a collective sadness but some opine that it was mis-directed.
Strauss, the composer, asked the question in this piece (the ending is linked below) called Death and Transfiguration - and it is the "transfiguration" part that causes us trouble. We all know about death and dying but it is the only thing going in that we have first hand knowledge of the event but not of the what happens next. Think about it some.
We have all had pets put to sleep humanely and, from my point of view at the very least, there is nothing harder on this earth. Human deaths we seem to understand and our faith guides us or doesn't or our intellect does or doesn't - no matter - we have been able to talk it through and no human, except those caught up in unfortunate accidents or, in 9-11's case, hasn't contemplated the end at one point. We wonder if the tree falling in the storm has thought about such an end to its life, or has the cat on the pillow or the dog at your foot.
There is a sense of contemplation of mortality that abounds in all this. Not, perhaps, a good subject for a Saturday morning, but one that crops up like a flower or a weed in our mind's garden. Nothing in all this is easy. We all grow old and each day is not so much a matter of anything other than not giving an inch to what is out there before us.
I spoke this morning with a dear friend who was doing some sorting in a house that needed to have some cobwebs removed and she mused about this. She was clearly in pain as there is nothing more poignant than an unopened drawer or a box in the closet. On the other hand, this is a tough woman who gets the juxtaposition of sadness and spiritual optimism and can live in those two worlds.
I/we can because she can. She can because we can. That is what makes us, well, us.
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