TURNING AND TURNING

One season at a time, evolving from day-to-day and never ceasing. Long summer nights and winter mornings all with their own call to remembrance. We cheat ourselves as we wish to hurry along our senses, thoughts, and dreams, never realizing that today, now, is the dream, the dream of life.

As I age and not gracefully, I look back and wonder: what if? I see the past like a stored 8mm camera, that taken from the recess of my mind, replays with a cast of characters no more. I look beside me and see my spouse I remember what once was, what life was about and how I played that life, and yet she has aged along with me. What I once felt for a mother's love has been converted by time and evolution to that of a spouse's love, more meaningful, more important and more cherished. I don't fear death, just the finality of it. No, not the finality of life, the finality of no longer having that someone alive in my heart and mind, that someone who helped me shape my soul.

Recently I found out a friend of mine from the past is suffering from a disease that shows no mercy, no quarter will be given, and no good. He asked me not to mention it and I won't, out of respect for his wishes. But too many seasons have changed since I first met him, way back when. He has had a successful and happy life, yet as he might leave the stage of life, his applause will be drowned out with prayers, for in the end that is how we are all applauded, with prayers. We indeed do make our exits and entrances and play many parts.

Prayers are not regulated to the holy, or the righteous, nor the saints and peacekeepers, no, they are regulated to the sinners, and the hypocrites, the lost and the forgotten, also. All too many of my past friends have fallen, from season to season, in the light of day and the dark of night. Yet I choose to pray because they were my friends, and my applause for them they will not hear, but my prayers for them will hopefully fall where they count, on God's ears.

 

I've had disappointment big time, I've lost a child, one lives in a group home, and I have been rejected and plotted against. I know that life is unfair and it is unfair for everyone, so I choose to move on. I will pull out the joy that is left in me, and not squander the time left, joylessly. I will live as long as I can for my little granddaughter, that wonderful little child who has filled a massive hole in my life as I watch her grow to maturity and hopefully womanhood and not the sadness of a disability.

I am tired. Tired of all the drama that exists, all the self-centeredness that seems to prevail, all the disrespect for feelings that seems to pervade the world these days. I am tired of people's meanness, disloyalty and will not fight that fight anymore. Why? Because my time is better spent remembering all that was good and decent, all that makes me laugh, and all I can make others laugh about. I will applaud their lives instead.