The Bad News and the Better News
I’m going to die, and so are you.
I’m sorry to mention it, but it’s been on my mind.
I don’t believe in, and therefore am not comforted by, stories about ‘going home to the lord’ or the afterlife, though I wouldn’t say I don’t believe, either.
I just don’t know.
Does anyone really know? I mean, does anyone really, absolutely know?
What I do know with absolute clarity is that we will die, we’re all terminal, there’s not a damned thing any of us can do about it. Whether we chew the scenery or cower upstage, no matter if we belt the aria or sway in the chorus, the curtain’s coming down. The show will be over. Final bow or not — lights out, thanks, goodnight everybody, drive safe!
In the first few decades of life, it’s a faint, easily denied, whisper in the background. Something that happens to others, to the weak and the ill and the old. A thing that, we know intellectually, will come for us in the great distant future.
But we are, most of us in our youth, so strong, so headstrong, pulsing with so much unquenchable life, that it is truly unimaginable. Death doesn’t have a place on the timeline of the young.
In the next few decades, we may grow gradually fearful. We feel things, scary things, we watch our contemporaries fall and it seems so unusual, so unlucky.
And yet.
We tend the ticking of our hearts, aware of the waning invincibility of youth. We grow careful, we panic, we join gyms and eat kale. We look at our loved ones with wary eyes, we take the stairs slowly and consider the new weighted meaning of red meat and dessert.
But lately, for some elusive reason, I’ve suddenly been struck with this thought:
I will die, one of these days, but that’s okay because — LOOK!
Today, there are fat blackberries buried in the brambles in the backyard and the sweetest, softest upside-down cat waiting for a caress.
The tomatoes wait to be picked and roasted in a bath of olive oil and garlic.
There’s a bluebird nesting in the back wall of the house and a great wild hawk circling the back field.
There’s work to be done, good work, work under the sun and in the dirt, work that hurts but sends you to bed like an exhausted, happy child.
There’s washing up and tidying, the lining up of endless ducks.
Books to be read, cantatas in the background. Monk is at Town Hall and it’s 1959 and it cannot be missed.
There’s half a bottle of pink wine in the back fridge and fresh peaches, a buttermilk chocolate cake to make and that call I’m waiting for.
My head is packed with ideas, rubbing elbows with the mad chattering worries. The rickety bike waits in the barn.
I can tip my head back in the sunshine and gulp the sweet breath of life and know that someone loves me and there’s a soft bed scattered with well-worn blankets at the end of the day.
Things hurt and I’m scared, but LOOK!
There’s so much, everywhere, it’s endless. So many glorious distractions!
So yes — I’m going to die and so are you, but it’s okay because today we get to live.
