Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth
to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!
This Episode: What Ever Happened to.... ??!!
It's an outrage! Something must be done!... Arthritis? Gout? Pustules? Boils, pimples? Back spasms! Knees that sound like a chuck-a-luck game? An
elbow that's constantly being banged into hard, immoveable objects? Pain? LOSS!! I mean, why is it that those of us who have fallen into the pit of advanced age... I like to term it, "GeezerHood"!... have to suffer so many agonies and indignities, including the scourge of Ageism itself?
Most importantly, most significantly, where the hell are all my great and good friends and family members? I mean... where'd they go??!! Why!!??
Steve, Pat, Jim, Boobers, Patty, Karen, John, Bob, Carol, Tommy, Morry, Abi... so many others. Where are they? To what train, bus or duty station do they repair (meaning, report, as if commanded to do so by a kind of tribunal... a military term I never quite understood! ...sorta like the mystery of Military Time!!)? Where do they go once they jump off the mortal trampoline and disappear into the ether, a dense fog, mystical smoke...?
Come back, damn it! Wherever you've gone, they don't need you. We need you! We want you here, with us! You left far too damn soon, too young!
I remember a support group to which I once belonged. We were discussing the existence of a deity and the possibility of an afterlife, the concept of reincarnation...
One member of our group opined that he actually did so, or wanted to believe in reincarnation. It seemed to the member that additional lives tend to reconcile all of the inequities of human existence. "Why are some people born rich and privileged, while others are thrust into spheres of poverty, disease, racial caste systems, physical and intellectual infirmities, to languish in sadness, mediocrity and misery?," he asked, sort of rhetorically, to no one in particular, or to the group as a whole, perhaps.
"I mean," the member continued, "why can't we come back, be reborn in circumstances that are different from those of a former life? Poverty to wealth... perfect health to lack of it... Conversely, why don't the rich and privileged, those who never truly suffered, come back into a life of poverty and abuse, even a smattering of abject stupidity...? Now that would be true equality!" The rest of us pondered deeply the member's passionately-expressed musings!
"I'd like to come back as a big fish," one member countered The rest of us looked at him as if he's been suddenly lobotomized. No one asks why "a big fish?" (Why not a pelican...? Just wondering... What about a Bonobo!?....)
I think I'm getting off the track, sort of! I guess I mean to ask the great, unanswerable question: "Why does it seem that, too often, the best of us die young, too young? And why do so many 'great souls' (so to speak) leave us too soon, when their lives had so much meaning, and they had so much more to share and to give to the worlds in which they lived, and to the people and worthy organizations with whom they co-existed, or for which they volunteered?"
I mean, there was so much more I wanted to say to and discuss with my friends, meaning the "departed ones." So much more I wanted to do with them... travels, adventures, and, yes, even educative activities such as reading and talking about good books, voluntarism, intelligent films... politics, too, of course, dependent upon one's philosophy, attitudes, beliefs, values! (Politics is tricky stuff, we're often told!)
Steve! Patsy! Patrick! Booby! Where the hell are you, and why don't you visit anymore??!! Dreams?... I talk to my dead loved ones in my dreams! Sometimes the conversations are a bit silly, sometimes rather poignant! I talked to Steve, recently, while he and I were seated on an unrecognizable concrete stoop. "What's Sue really like," Steve asked me. I told him my thoughts. He looked at me for a long moment, smiled and appeared to accept my assessment. We also talked about the haircut of an athlete we both admired. What the hell was that about?... I have no idea... Oh, and Larry? Steve never knew him, but asked his age. "Lare the Hair" was my friend from the other side of the continent! (I wonder if HE's still with us??!)
I keep pictures, images, of two of my dearest friends on my computer desktop. One or the other pops up unexpectedly, every so often, when I turn the thing on in the morning. I talk to the "popped-up" one for a brief time when that happens. We smile at one another, and then go on with whatever tedium commands our attention at the moment, content, I suppose, to have had a brief encounter!
I miss my dead friends, and family members, too, of course, who are no longer interacting with us in the realm of the living! Emotions boil to the surface... anger, resentment, frustration, sadness, longing... Resurrection of the dead is not in our domain, unfortunately, except in memory or dreams, or perhaps the mental wanderings that seem to affect us all when a pleasant stare into nowhere and nothing becomes a reverie, a journey into a distant sphere of consciousness. I wonder... Maybe I'll dream about P.T. tonight!! We'll have a fine little chin wag... that I may or may not remember upon waking!
(Special Dedication: To all of our dearest dead friends and family members. We'd like to hear from you when possible! Give us a sign or something... For example, when Patty died, she returned as a butterfly and landed on us, and once on Boober's golf club. Booby came back, we think, as a house fly. We enjoy those kinds of signs (sort of like "medium-ship" -- inter-spiritual communication, maybe?) and reappearances of the departed too, of course!! "Hello? Hello??... What was that you said? What?...")
(Another Thing -- a Definition: dead... /ded/ Adjective
1. No longer alive. "a dead body"... synonyms: deceased, expired, departed, gone, no more, passed on, passed away... (In Botswana, I believe they prefer "Late"! Kind of a nice euphemism, eh??) (I find that many people in many different societies and cultures don't care for the word, "dead," but tend to use euphemisms, such as those listed above! Interesting, what?). Oh, what about "Past Tense," maybe "Former Person"!!
It's an outrage! Something must be done!... Arthritis? Gout? Pustules? Boils, pimples? Back spasms! Knees that sound like a chuck-a-luck game? An
Most importantly, most significantly, where the hell are all my great and good friends and family members? I mean... where'd they go??!! Why!!??
Steve, Pat, Jim, Boobers, Patty, Karen, John, Bob, Carol, Tommy, Morry, Abi... so many others. Where are they? To what train, bus or duty station do they repair (meaning, report, as if commanded to do so by a kind of tribunal... a military term I never quite understood! ...sorta like the mystery of Military Time!!)? Where do they go once they jump off the mortal trampoline and disappear into the ether, a dense fog, mystical smoke...?
Come back, damn it! Wherever you've gone, they don't need you. We need you! We want you here, with us! You left far too damn soon, too young!
I remember a support group to which I once belonged. We were discussing the existence of a deity and the possibility of an afterlife, the concept of reincarnation...
One member of our group opined that he actually did so, or wanted to believe in reincarnation. It seemed to the member that additional lives tend to reconcile all of the inequities of human existence. "Why are some people born rich and privileged, while others are thrust into spheres of poverty, disease, racial caste systems, physical and intellectual infirmities, to languish in sadness, mediocrity and misery?," he asked, sort of rhetorically, to no one in particular, or to the group as a whole, perhaps.
"I mean," the member continued, "why can't we come back, be reborn in circumstances that are different from those of a former life? Poverty to wealth... perfect health to lack of it... Conversely, why don't the rich and privileged, those who never truly suffered, come back into a life of poverty and abuse, even a smattering of abject stupidity...? Now that would be true equality!" The rest of us pondered deeply the member's passionately-expressed musings!
"I'd like to come back as a big fish," one member countered The rest of us looked at him as if he's been suddenly lobotomized. No one asks why "a big fish?" (Why not a pelican...? Just wondering... What about a Bonobo!?....)
I think I'm getting off the track, sort of! I guess I mean to ask the great, unanswerable question: "Why does it seem that, too often, the best of us die young, too young? And why do so many 'great souls' (so to speak) leave us too soon, when their lives had so much meaning, and they had so much more to share and to give to the worlds in which they lived, and to the people and worthy organizations with whom they co-existed, or for which they volunteered?"
I mean, there was so much more I wanted to say to and discuss with my friends, meaning the "departed ones." So much more I wanted to do with them... travels, adventures, and, yes, even educative activities such as reading and talking about good books, voluntarism, intelligent films... politics, too, of course, dependent upon one's philosophy, attitudes, beliefs, values! (Politics is tricky stuff, we're often told!)
Steve! Patsy! Patrick! Booby! Where the hell are you, and why don't you visit anymore??!! Dreams?... I talk to my dead loved ones in my dreams! Sometimes the conversations are a bit silly, sometimes rather poignant! I talked to Steve, recently, while he and I were seated on an unrecognizable concrete stoop. "What's Sue really like," Steve asked me. I told him my thoughts. He looked at me for a long moment, smiled and appeared to accept my assessment. We also talked about the haircut of an athlete we both admired. What the hell was that about?... I have no idea... Oh, and Larry? Steve never knew him, but asked his age. "Lare the Hair" was my friend from the other side of the continent! (I wonder if HE's still with us??!)
I keep pictures, images, of two of my dearest friends on my computer desktop. One or the other pops up unexpectedly, every so often, when I turn the thing on in the morning. I talk to the "popped-up" one for a brief time when that happens. We smile at one another, and then go on with whatever tedium commands our attention at the moment, content, I suppose, to have had a brief encounter!
 |
| Not a real photo, but an artists's depiction of spectres, or ghosts, rising from tombs, or some such, preparing to visit the living... maybe??!! |
I miss my dead friends, and family members, too, of course, who are no longer interacting with us in the realm of the living! Emotions boil to the surface... anger, resentment, frustration, sadness, longing... Resurrection of the dead is not in our domain, unfortunately, except in memory or dreams, or perhaps the mental wanderings that seem to affect us all when a pleasant stare into nowhere and nothing becomes a reverie, a journey into a distant sphere of consciousness. I wonder... Maybe I'll dream about P.T. tonight!! We'll have a fine little chin wag... that I may or may not remember upon waking!
(Special Dedication: To all of our dearest dead friends and family members. We'd like to hear from you when possible! Give us a sign or something... For example, when Patty died, she returned as a butterfly and landed on us, and once on Boober's golf club. Booby came back, we think, as a house fly. We enjoy those kinds of signs (sort of like "medium-ship" -- inter-spiritual communication, maybe?) and reappearances of the departed too, of course!! "Hello? Hello??... What was that you said? What?...")
(Another Thing -- a Definition: dead... /ded/ Adjective
1. No longer alive. "a dead body"... synonyms: deceased, expired, departed, gone, no more, passed on, passed away... (In Botswana, I believe they prefer "Late"! Kind of a nice euphemism, eh??) (I find that many people in many different societies and cultures don't care for the word, "dead," but tend to use euphemisms, such as those listed above! Interesting, what?). Oh, what about "Past Tense," maybe "Former Person"!!
adjective
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