Found out this morning that my Dad passed away last night. He'd been in the nursing home for a while and he was pretty weak. Then he got pneumonia a few days ago and everything went fast. Hospice came in to try to reduce his pain. Mercifully it wasn't a long struggle. So, he joins Mom now. God rest his soul.
When my brother died last month, I realized something of my own mortality - my siblings have started to pass on. My turn is coming. This now sort of confirms that my generation is becoming the leading edge on mankind's endless pilgrimage to eternity. In the great scheme of things, it's not long until that happens for me. But, in terms of the day-to-day, the mundane, the getting up and working and loving and eating and sleeping, it's still a long way off. I can keep on ignoring it. Just not forever.
I think I'll go exercise. :) Right after I finish this beer.
It felt so strange today to tell my bosses and staff that I'm taking bereavement leave - again. They must think "how much more can happen to this guy?" No kidding. Remember that study about stress levels? So many points for a divorce, so many for a job change, so many for relative's death? Add them all up and they can mean serious health issues. Since June there's been just a few accumulated points.
Starting with hearing I was losing my job, then beginning a job search, interviewing, going unemployed for several months, then starting a new job, moving to a new city, selling and buying houses, my brother dying, my Dad dying, and a whole host of other things I can't even begin to list, all I need now is... well, no - let's not talk like that. Maybe it stops here. Maybe this is all for a while. I sure hope so. That is of course after the movers come and haul all our stuff to a new house 1000 miles away.
June of 2005 through May of 2006 will have been maybe the most change I've ever experienced in one 12 month period. Oh, did I mention turning 50? :)
It's a good time to reinvent myself. To choose to do some things that I wouldn't have felt free to do a decade ago. To live more, to play more, to try new things, to learn more, to understand more, to love more. Time is short, darn it. That's awfully apparent to me. I want to make the most of the time I've been given. No sense holding back now. Fifty's a good age to spread my wings, like the butterfly emerging from a cocooned stage of life. Because soon enough, I'll be spreading them once again, but in a different context. This one:
"I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory." I Cor 15:50-54
Now that will be a real metaporphosis! And today, I'm ready for it. Bring it on, Lord, anytime. I've lived well. But UNTIL it's my time, I will live the rest of this life, however long, with all the vigor I have. I still have some wing-flapping to do!
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