I felt like the following entry was age-appropriate because I closely related to it. I think that some of you might relate too. ~ Barb B
Autumn is Coming in the Winter of My Life
Early September and at first glance there are no signs of autumn anywhere. It’s just as hot and muggy as it was in July. But the trees and flowers look aged. They don’t look like the children they were in the spring and early summer. Time has worn them down. The leaves on the trees are still green but look old, dark, and dusty. The flowers that bloomed so brilliantly in the spring look weary… with petals and leaves wilted and old. Some are falling on the ground and turning brown. Summer is dying. According to the calendar, autumn is just a few weeks away. But autumn will arrive when it will and no calendar or any of man’s other time-measuring devices will make autumn come one minute before it’s ready.
This time of year makes me pensive. I think the fall brings with it a reminder that our time on earth is limited. That none of us have much time to spend on this planet at least not when compared to the stars and the universe in which they shine.
Our lives are but a flicker in the great flame of time. Even those who live into their nineties are but tiny flickers in the flame of the candle of time or a single grain of sand on the vast beach of time. One hundred years is but a single, insignificant grain of sand on the shores of this vast unbounded universe where time is measured in billions of years. And really not measured at all.
At this time of year, on the cusp of autumn, my thoughts turn melancholy and pensive.
I am past my life’s summer and autumn and for most of it I was not aware I was sliding so quickly down the steep slope of life. And now I find myself in the middle of life’s winter and looking back on the long road behind me. The road ahead is only a fraction of the distance of the road behind me.
Sometimes I get angry with my parents and grandparents for not warning me about how quickly life passes. How limited time really is. How growing old is sometimes not fun – and certainly not for sissies. I am the only one left behind My mom, dad, stepmom, sister, and grandparents have all passed on. My grandfather, whom I loved so dearly, and who I considered my best friend when he was alive, never once warned me about time and aging. He was younger when he died than I am now.
I’m angry that death is a certainty and no one can escape it. Yet sometimes death is welcomed by those who suffer or who are lonely. “All the lonely people…where do they all come from…”
Some people believe in heaven and some don’t. Some people believe in hell, and some don’t – usually the ones who think they’re headed that way. Those who believe in heaven have faith. Faith is all you have when it comes to heaven – because no one I know who has died has come back and comforted me with the news that heaven is a real place. Everything is based on faith.
I would love to have that much faith that I know for certain there is a heaven, but it would take even more faith to believe I belong there.
So, those of us who equivocate have to have something else to believe in when it comes to death that is more – how should I say it? Intellectual?
I figure (assuming there’s no hell – or that if there is I’m not headed there) then there is a heaven – and if there isn’t then I’ll be exactly where I was a thousand years ago. Nowhere. I don’t recall thinking anything a thousand years ago – or even a hundred years ago – “Oh, my, I wish I could be alive so I could eat, drink, live, and be merry.” You know what? I don’t remember worrying about anything or wondering about anything a hundred or a thousand years ago. I was nothing and I had no cares or worries or dreams or desires… and I didn’t miss them.
All these dark thoughts are inspired by the angle of the sun’s rays, the color of the leaves on the trees, and the flowers that now look so weary as autumn approaches.
I get so pensive and introspective this time of the year. I can’t help it. I can’t control it. It’s just how I am.
And autumn is coming in the winter of my life.
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