Sky Hound’s Kiss – Photo: L.Weikel

Telltale end-of-life drone

Once again sitting here on our couch, the heavy wooden front door open to the cooler air and delicious night sounds of the countryside. Even with the heavier formal door wide open, another, less formidable wooden screen door remains. It does the job as sentinel, culling the bugs that would otherwise bombard the lights here in the living room. It’s October. The crickets have taken to engaging in the telltale end-of-life drone instead of their more lyrical, mid-summer rhythms. Only sporadically do I discern an errant katydid taking a stand and letting it be known that it’s still alive.

September came and went before I was ready. And I have a sneaking suspicion October may be even worse in that regard.

Sky Hound

Tomorrow it will be two weeks since the Pisces full moon. It most definitely was a moody moon, full of feelings (and in my case, sorrow). For a brief moment tonight, as I took a walk, the clouds formed what appeared to me to be a “sky hound” bending down to kiss or sniff. I can’t tell which, and perhaps it was both.

The amazing thing to me was how rapidly the clouds shifted and reconfigured themselves, leaving no trace of the image I’d just seen and felt touch my heart. Here one moment, gone the next.

The relentlessness of time (human construct that it is) is especially cruel to those who’ve lost a loved one. I remember when Karl died – and my mother twenty years earlier – feeling utterly enraged and indignant that everything didn’t come to a screeching halt as a result of the overwhelming loss I, and the world, had just sustained.

Another Perspective

I’ve recently found myself preoccupied with contemplating how I would feel to receive a shattering diagnosis of personal health. Some friends of mine are walking this path right now, and I’m not inclined to ask them to reveal to me their deepest feelings when it’s quite possible they may have no desire to ask themselves the big questions.

I find myself wondering, would I watch tv anymore? I’m betting no books would get read that didn’t immediately sweep me off my feet. It’s the little things I wonder about.

We’re all going to die. Some of us are given windows of when our stint here may be over. In some ways, it’s take-your-breath-away scary. In others, I imagine it hones your appreciation for precisely what’s most important.

Would most of us choose to live our final days in ways completely foreign to our day-to-day lives? I doubt it; but I can only imagine it is different for each one of us.

I want to savor my life in solidarity with those who’ve been told that’s their wisest course of action.

(T-54)