Monday, February 25, 2008
What is it?
Is life a game or a play or a poem or just a gift?
Sometimes it is all of those things blended together at once to me; at other times it is just one of those, but it is all I have -- this life (first or virtual).
Carla just lost her Dad and will likely lose her Mom soon, too. And she is trying to make lists now to be sure she doesn't forget anything while she sits a bit numb trying to look normal and competent. She wants to go home and take her two boys and be supported by her dear husband, but the costs are so high for them to fly together and they were, thankfully home just less than a year ago. So she will go alone and walk alone and she will survive this with others of her large and warm family.
Recently she grew concerned when I did not waken as usual -- at like 3AM -- to start my day, and did not answer my phone (had left it in another room). She sent me an email to me finally and I called her right away to thank her for her concern and to let her know I was simply exhausted. Our conversation was a rare one (nowadays everyone seems too busy for family, even for our meals together in the evening); and it was a very precious one because, for me it was the first time in ages I realised she would miss me as much as I would miss her if we weren't friends. And the big thought for me was: this is life and I will lose it one day.
All we have are those we love and who love us and ... how precious is that! And if we are wise we will make lists, and bustle about ticking things off. We will kiss and hug those we love as if we may never see them again -- each time.
For me, I will try to build into the lives of others and leave my legacy of words in their keeping. And perhaps, just perhaps some will miss me. Many won't remember me. But in this way I will have had a rich life from those who have touched me with their ideas and their energy and their faith and their love.
You know who you are!
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2 comments:
Long before there was a musician or group by such a name, evanescence was a word that describes, you might say celebrates, those brief flashes of beauty: the heart-aching loveliness of cherry blossoms before the wind carries them away, a full moon sailing amid a cloudy sea. To a tree or rock, our lives must seem so brief, yet to the caterpillar that is born, metamorphoses to a butterfly and may not live a whole year, were it aware of us we would seem as venerable as the trees that were fully-grown when Rome ruled the known world, and still stand strong today.
It is the awareness of our mortality that makes life so unutterably sweet, at times, and also so unbearably sad, as we think back on moments of joy, of things not done, dreams faded in the face of various realities of day-to-day existence.
Wallace Stevens’ poem, “Thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird,” comes to mind, specifically stanza V:
“I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.”
It is a poem. It is a gift. It is what you see, how you see it. It is joy and pain, love and heartache, enduring and all too brief. It is what it is. It is Now. Treasure it.
"What is love?
Tis not hereafter....
Present love hath present laughter."
Do we love and lose
or never love at all?
I love
and and try to love again
....what do I look for?
Just a moment of joy
in a world of maddness
(real and virtual).
My heart is crushed often,
but the pleasure mixed
with the pain of loss
makes all the friction
of trying
well worth the pain.
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