On Time and Watching

I am glad that I came back to blogging the other day.  It was not to find a place to vent or ponder thou I do those things here too.  I came back because I wanted to visit friends and maybe find a few new ones.


Timing makes being here now a necessity.

A relative is dieing.  Health and age play a role.  But this is not always the case.

I ponder death often.  It sits in the corner of the room quiet…  Listening…  Waiting…

This doesn’t mean that I court Death.  But we are friends of a sort.  I am not depressed or suicidal.  Only aware.

I know Death because I’m old enough to have seen it many times.  I’ve been in the room as older relatives have breathed their last.  I have buried my own child.  I have held their cold lifeless hands after that last good-bye.

I have also looked death in the eye.  Three heart attacks behind me and a few close calls with allergy attacks has made Death all too real for me.


And now I am brought back to the place where we are on watch yet again.  The parade of relatives and friends march on by.  Some look around…  peeking in corners to see just how close death lurks.  Others are afraid.  They keep their distance so that Death can’t come too close… or brush their arm in passing.  As if Death may accidently take them too.

I know that there is no escape.  I am happy to wait.  I am not foolhardy.  I take no risks or chances.

I do not court Death… But I am aware that Death is never very far off.  Daily the news tells me of the latest celebrity death, or accidental death, or murder.  No, not far at all.

Life comes with an expiration date.  No one gets out alive.  Accepting this is not easy for some, but we all must admit that it is true.

It is the sadness and loss that hurts the most.  We tell Death ‘Go away!’ ‘Don’t change my plans for a future once imagined with this person.’  ‘I want to write a future and make plans without your interference.’   But Death is deaf to our pleas.

So we hurt and are sad, we feel the loss and pick up the pieces.  We cry, hold hands, listen to each other.  We wait…  to feel better…  for it to be over…

We wait… for Death to move from its corner and claim another life sometime soon.   We are feeling helpless and all too vulnerable as we wait.