Living On

I must always start where death and life held hands; at a grave in the shade of an old oak.

I see myself there, but I am not there.

What I want to do here perhaps cannot be done in the present. Perhaps it can only be done in retrospect. In the cycle of funerals, all the same, but the pain of loss is never quite the same. Act one, act two, act three. But some deaths hurt more than others. Some deaths linger long after the crowd disbands, and several hundred souls, brought together for a single millisecond by the loss of a single life, go back to their corner of the earth, trying to be better, trying to remember, and trying to forget the pain. A life summed up as father, mother, brother, sister, grandmother, grandfather, aunt, uncle, friend, boss, employee. And gone.

But words, ten million words, could not tell this as it ought to be told.

There must be a sort of melody to life. Like background music that, if we could but hear it, we would know when danger was coming, so we would not be surprised. We would have some foreboding sense that Katniss would do everything to protect Prim, but she was still going to die. I imagine the angels hear it, and God knows already, so the drama of our lives unfolds, sometimes beautiful, sometimes tragic.

I take a sip of my black coffee.

I am happy because I have been miserable. Or at least I have learned to be happy in spite of the misery.

I have stood at the foot of many yawning graves. Two grandparents, a police officer, a friend, a friend’s baby, born deceased, and three uncles. Many others, and if I live longer, many more.

Then I too will pass away, and people will cry, not believing I’m gone, while holding my books and putting them in boxes to be given away, another little death. Trying to remember while trying to forget.

There must be a sort of melody to life. Like background music that, if we could but hear it, would tell us when danger was coming, so we would not be surprised. We would have some foreboding sense that Katniss would do everything to protect Prim, but she was still going to die. I imagine the angels hear it, and God knows already, so the drama of our lives unfolds, sometimes beautiful, sometimes tragic.

And that’s what life seems to be about. Having things happen, but not staying there. Living the next breath like you are dying, but you keep on living.

I hear my sister shaking her thermos in the living room, the ice clanking against the sides. The long chirp of a grasshopper in our ninety-one-degree August sun reaches my ear. Once, in a world that had yet to fall, man and woman could live and never ponder death. Now we all hold this paradox in our hands. We are born to die. But the real question is, how did we live.

I swallow and feel the warmth of the coffee waterfall down my throat, the warmth seeping into my veins, chasing away the chill of the air conditioner.

I thought about my violin, and how I would like to go play Schindler’s List to go with my mood.

It sounds so beautiful. It is evil maybe, but it is beautiful because it is the spawn of an age where beauty was born from the womb of a cruel century.

But now my coffee is gone, the grasshopper song is gone, and I no longer hear my sister’s ice.

They are moments now dead, but not forgotten.

I am dying, but I am not yet dead.

I am going to go out and live, love and laugh.

I hope you do the same.

Thanks for reading!!

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