Life.
Stop.
Go backwards.
Run.
Zig.
Zag.
No matter what direction I go or don’t go life continues to saunter right along.
Feel Good.
Feel Bad.
Full of Joy.
Quite Depressed.
No matter how I feel or don’t feel life refuses to stop for me, for anyone.
It seems like yesterday…
but I know its not.
Youth has become a distant memory and middle age is in the rearview mirror.
The clock clicks off second after second bur it seems that there are extra clicks in between.
The phone rang tonight.
A welcome voice of one I have known for a lifetime.
Troubles.
Divorce.
Depression.
Loss.
I say all the right words.
Yet, I know that life is ugly and full of travail and pain.
No matter what the smiling snake oil preachers or new age guru’s tell me…
life is a rough road for one and all.
If through the twist of fate I reach the golden years, or so they are called anyway…
how will it end for me?
Does it end well for anyone?
Is there such a thing as a good death?
Dead seems dead and who would ever want to choose dead.
As I lay in bed at night I feel my heart beating.
You know your heart is enlarged.
But it always has been.
I listen to my breathing.
It seems shallow.
It seems more labored than before.
I turn in the darkness to look at the one I love.
I wonder what she thinks?
I wonder how she feels?
We have spent our entire adult life together.
Our love has endured.
We have endured.
Perhaps she is what makes life worth living.
Perhaps she will be what gives me the strength on that last day to smile
and say…
it’s been good.
Beautifully Written!
Oh, Bruce, you really tugged at my emotions with that one. I’ll be 60 this summer, be married forty years next year. Made it through so many challenges, some still ongoing. Being older doesn’t bother me in itself, I even like my gray hair. But I’m just haunted by a constant bittersweet feeling, an awareness of the passage of time. I don’t want to be younger, I just want to have more time, if that makes any sense.
That seriously made me tear up. I mean, big time. Especially the part about the woman who makes your life worthwhile. I feel the same about my husband.
Turning 59 today, still find myself turning over to look at my wife of 34 years. Regularly think the same thing as you. Only I don’t seem to have the gift to quite put in the searing perspective as you do here. Brilliant. Epicurus would be proud. Live each day to the fullest. You have helped us do the same. EFH
Kleenex! Where’s my kleenex? *sniff*
Honest and beautiful.
You may not be a philosopher Bruce, but you definitely have a gift for hitting life’s nail on the head with your writings.
This is beautiful, Bruce. It would resonate with any of us of a certain age. Life, you know? Whatever it’s been, most of us, at our age, can start to appreciate that old saying about being “a helluva ride!”.
This is absolutely amazing. It made me tear up. I’m glad you have a woman to stand by you like that. With permission, I would like to show this poem to my 11th grade students and see what they get out of it. Would that be alright with you?
Well now that I’m old and I’m a’ready to goI get to thinkin’ what happened a long time agoHad a lot of kids, a lot of trouble and painBut then, whoops oh lordy, well I’d do it all again
Because she had kisses sweeter than wineShe had, mmm…kisses…sweeter…than…wine
1Co 15:54-57
(54) So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.
(55) O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?
(57) But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
well except for me. There is no victory through the Lord Jesus Christ since I don’t believe there is any Lord Jesus Christ. When I draw my last breath and all the nice words have been said about me, my body will be cremated and my ashes will be scattered along the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, near a place where my wife and I had what we call our perfect day.