Please Stop the Days

I feel a certain antiquity seeping into my bones. Every so often I think of someone's father who is long gone. In fact, that person is long gone, too and I ask why my own edges are burnt and my script faded.

I don't like the idea of growing old at all. I don't like it for me and I don't want it for anyone else, either. And, God forbid if there is a passing on to the next life, as we so gently express, of our beloved pets, then we are slapped real hard and wake up to inevitability.

I have about ten to twenty years left, if the cursed "c" don't get me and I don't find myself in a shootout. My bones and joints ache. I'm in constant argument with my body about what it should be able to endure. I give it a lot of responsibility since my own father told me the body has a remarkable ability to heal itself. Well, then, heal away, my friend. I won't drink, smoke or eat junk food and in return, I would like things patched up and fixed and running until the last spark plug.

All I can hope is that death will be an adventure, that all of the horrific tales about hell are reserved only for those who have committed heinous crimes against man or beast and for the rest of us, we have a nice time suspended in an eternity with blue lagoons and angel wings and no need for money.

I do intend to be part of life here, if I can, to keep that inevitable threshold that has a bad habit of appearing out of nowhere, from being so scary and sad.

I don't like the subject of death and it seems so painful lately with people we know either via the internet or day-to-day who are caught off-guard by the unexpected illness and heart-breaking end to their lives. There's humor in this essay I've written, but don't be thinking I take the subject lightly. As is so often the case, I see humor when I'm hurting the most.

As I'm putting together the plot for the third book in the series, I'm challenged with the eldest character, Father Jack, a good priest and as down-to-earth as they come who is constantly facing mortality each time he dispenses the holy oils. I don't know yet where he will lead me. ~ Julie