Wisdom's Cruel Reality

Foolishness, all of it
for in the end, all takes leave
everyone departs
and must walk their own path

It is not those who die we should mourn
but those who are left behind

It matters not the care that’s taken
the vulture still waits
and watches
flesh already half putrid
and oh, so pale

Will the bag pipes play
or silence reign
when all is said
and all deeds done

What is reality and what fantasy? After sixty years, one would think I’d know and yet the more I learn, the longer I live, the less sure I am of anything temporal. What is actually ours and what endures for a time, only to leave us?

How do we, as finite creatures, face each new day and brave what comes our way with stoic smiles and the exchange of pleasantries with others who are what? Perhaps unaware of what awaits them? If this is so, don’t tell them, I beseech you. Let them live in darkness of mind rather than the searing light of truth that pierces the heart and explodes the brain.

Life is a carnival, a county fair, that comes around setting up the facade of gaiety, carefree days and magical nights of colored lights that swirl and bedazzle us into a certainty that all is right and just. Simple pleasures abound and those who do not succumb to greed will not lose all. We who work hard and are honest and caring will have our reward.

Ah, yes our reward. Surely, if we have been on the “right side” and have been just in our dealings and honorable in our ways … we who consider more than ourselves, who reach out a helping hand to those less blessed, we will be spared … won’t we?

Of course not! There has never been a promise made by truthful lips or writings that claim such, save, perhaps a foolish child’s fairytale or in a young man’s song to his beloved, but nowhere else. Our God did not promise such a thing, not for this earth at least, not for this life. Our hope then, is only in Him and in our deliverance from pain, the depths un-foretold and a matter we can truly not comprehend, until it is our turn.

Our turn to seek His peace that surpasses all understanding, our only comfort, as clumps of freshly turned soil fall and echo on the coffin that contains the body of our loved one. As Alice through the looking- glass, nothing is as it should be or has been known. The world is topsy-turvy and insanely it continues on, not standing still as it should, as we have done.

All of the promises, hopes, dreams and plans are now being covered, shovel-full by shovel-full and we know that we should turn and leave this place where we do not belong, where we can not follow, but to where do we depart? Our place, once by their side, no longer exists.

No, don’t teach them if they are not already aware. Keep this from their knowledge as long as possible and let them run on sandy beaches with wind blowing lull-a-byes through their hair and let the sun warm their faces and their hearts …

Before they are shattered.