The proverbial circle of life never ends and never stops…circling. That might sound goofy and or trite but today reminded me again of how that works.
My son turned 21, a dear friend turned 52, a friend’s mother 79 and I saw word that a friend from the Jblogosphere lost his wife of 44 years to pancreatic cancer.
I felt badly as he often wrote about how he had been in love with her since they were children and because their oldest child died at 22.
Just one year older than my oldest.
When I first learned about their son my own was probably about five so though I knew 22 was young it didn’t really hit me just how young until I thought about it today.
We never know if we will bury a spouse but we expect it might happen, never a child and a spouse.
And so we come to the intersections of wishes, dreams and reality.
Better To Ask & Know
Not long ago I wrote a blog post in which I laid out some thoughts, ideas and feelings along with a question or two.
The idea behind it is that it is better to ask and know the answers to some questions than to wander around uncertain.
It wasn’t the first time I have posed such things or the first time they have been ignored or left unread like fallow fields in need of plowing.
I thought of going direct and chose the path not taken because it felt like the better route to pursue.
Upon further reflection it made me snort because I couldn’t decide what lay behind my hesitation to ask. Was it concern over receiving a no or some other objection or was it really based upon intuition telling me to let the cards play as they do without forcing a hand.
Wouldn’t be hard to argue both sides nor would that be particularly effective or prudent so I went with the stronger gut feeling.
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Been bouncing questions off of one of my dad’s first cousins about family because at 96 he is the oldest one left.
Learned about another cousin who died at 21 because of complications from an arm he injured climbing over a fence.
Got me thinking again about how much luck is involved in our lives and how that can be applied in multiple ways.
He passed in 1938 and though I know few details I suspect that 83 years later modern medicine could have made the difference. No guarantee of course, but we don’t know.
Same thing for my uncle, if he had made it a little beyond 1994 there is no telling what could have happened.
But the sand ran out of the hourglass for both and that is the reality. Hopes and wishes were issued for both but neither worked for those who pushed.
Some have tried to tell me not to question what they call G-d’s plan and I shake my head at them. My own religious tradition makes it clear we ought to engage in questioning and if it didn’t I would still do so.
I don’t blindly accept everything I am fed and even things I am more likely to do so often get questioned.
Got to maintain a healthy dose of skepticism because there are things that do or do not happen that are based upon whim and arbitrary choices.
There is no logic or reason behind them so sometimes asking for the explanation is what moves you from first base to home plate.
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