Not Yet, Long Dirt Nap

Today is one of those that makes a midwestern autumn day so wonderful. Chilly enough to need a jacket or sweatshirt, cool sunshine, gray clouds, yellow and green leaves still clinging to the trees, despite the soft winds that play at the edges. I’m refilling the bird bath with a garden hose, spraying out the old leaves and muck, refilling it, all while an irritated chickadee peers down on me, commenting on my slowness. The sunlight sparkles in the spray, patches of rainbow flicker about.


I realize how fortunate I am to be alive, to be a sentient being at large in world of color, sound, and feeling. I’m trillions of interlinked cells somehow mobile, electrical impulses that come together in miraculous ways, light patterns on the back of my eyeballs making images my mind makes into comprehensible pictures. I am blessed indeed.


I know that it’s not a wonderful world out there. I’m in a place that’s worth being, though I know so many, many people in the world are not. I sometimes feel guilty about that, but I also realize that my guilt does nothing to fix anything. And if there’s a God, He has a rationale that’s beyond understanding and beyond my ability to have any effect.


And if He doesn’t exist, well, it’s a world that is as it is, and I somehow have the ability to appreciate and react to it. There is beauty, and I get to experience it.


More fundamentally, as the years have gone by I have come to understand how temporary this is. People I know have gone over and never come back. The first was my first childhood friend, who died when we were seven or so. The latest, I guess, was an aunt who died last year, leaving my mother as the only one left of her generation in our family. I think about my father, gone for more than 20 years, and of the walks and talks we shared; they were real, and now they are gone. He felt the sunshine and wind, and now he’s gone.


And so soon will I be. Gone to that long dirt nap from which none return.


But not yet. Today the birds are at the feeder, the sun still shines, and I feel the breeze sharp against my face.


And whatever else awaits, I’m grateful for having been here.