Death comes for the best and the worst of us, all and sundry, no matter who or when. "I'm sorry, it isn't an opportune time right now; come again sometime later." That won't fly in the face of death. The acts of funeral workers are never done. To think you or your loved ones cannot die is indulgent, childish imaginings. We are all susceptible to disease. The black armbands are rarely ever worn any longer, so many touched by death so often feel the weight of the angel on their shoulder, more a constant burden than a goad to do the right thing in life.
The fallen angel burns through our shoulder, the other shoulder, the sinister one, down deep into our torso, our entrails, until we are infected by disease, by double pneumonia, or by cancer in our liver, or in our pancreas, a true death sentence to fight to the end for pardon, for clemency, or escape, but the warden and the governor know, they have your case files, your oncologist watches, hovering above your body, or is that your soul looking down on you, on the gurney, or cold on the morgue slab. Death waits for no one, no opportune time. Death is the dark angel with blackened wings, the boy that flies toward the sun, only to fall into the sea and drown, skull crushed upon impact from such a height, the force of gravity, so weak, yet important. Death is not our friend, but provides an end, welcome or otherwise, appreciate the fleeting beauty of this life of love and sorrow, of pain and loss, agony and the scent of bitter almonds, no peace is found in death, only the deception that death offers peace within this lifetime.
Peace is the strength found within fortitude, within struggle with life and not with death. Grit, perseverance, focus, drive and will lead a person to stumble upon peace, as if upon a quiet stream, a brook out of nowhere appears for a moment, the ephemeral nature of this life will not allow for ease beside this brook for long, the candle must be extinguished, this life must come to an end at some point, anytime death desires, the weight of smoke is our memorial everlasting in the minds of loved ones until their death, or until books of history crumble from age, from lack of use, mortality opens the pages only to slumber like a cat, when and where it so chooses, our immortality, an illusion, the face in the mirror that appears real, everlasting, but changes everyday, so our former self dies in each moment, changes as our bodies age, until death.
Death is our mythology against time. Nothing is known beyond this one lifetime, the afterlife, a mystery cloaked in a veil of imaginary deceit; if it exists, then where, how, whither God, the angels, heaven, hell and the devil? We live for time, in time, rarely on time. Perhaps only for our own funeral. We say we will sleep when we're dead, how true! And yet, so false, our bodies decompose, we return to matter, we sleep no more. We return to the earth, a bag of bones.
No comments:
Post a Comment