 |
| Handsome Bogart, 18-years old Photo: Ileana Johnson 2017 |
I used to
think that it was rather morbid that my in-laws had purchased their burial
plots when my husband was a small child. Every time we went for a visit, we
stayed in a hotel across from the hilly Memorial Gardens, with a large white
praying statue on top. The lush green grass and the occasional Canada geese grazing
on the slopes were peaceful and comforting evidence of perennial life.
Every time
Ray would drive by he would joke in his inimitable dark humor that he bought
his wife an anniversary gift and she never used it. It gave me shivers,
imagining my husband’s parents deceased.
As the way
of all flesh goes, it seems to be closer and closer that Joan may have to use
that anniversary gift from long, long time ago. Time flew by and, as it did, we
thought of living, of family, of togetherness, of life’s accomplishments, not
of mortality. We thought of ourselves as living forever until someone close or
known to us got really sick and died. We brushed away the annoying thought of
death, as if it would never happen to us eventually. Yet we all leave this
earth as dust, a short lived spark in the memory of those who know us, perhaps
love us, who are still alive and left behind.
I had an
eerie feeling the first time I visited my Dad’s grave. It was perhaps because I
was really sick when he died and I could not attend the funeral so many
thousands of miles away. In a sense, I never really had closure. I stared for
hours at the pictures of his funeral my uncle had sent me, but it was not the
same. It was as if he was still alive in some far away corner of the world.
But I was staring
then at this corner of the world and reality slapped me in the face. My Daddy
was but dust and my memories of our lives together for the first twenty years
of my life. With the grace of God, Dad and Mom made me, cared for me, and loved
me enough to let me go to a better place so far away. How do you ever thank
your parents for choosing life?
I knew Dad’s
mortal remains where interred there, but his spirit was somewhere else, in
Heaven, but in some ways it lived inside of me. It was so quiet around me, you
could almost hear every sound nature made, buzzing of bees, the wind moving the
tall grasses, and the leaves twirling on tree branches in the gentle breeze.
The earth was alive but my Daddy was part of its dust. His bones were resting
in a bag deep in the earth, the wooden coffin perhaps long decayed. I planted a
flower on his grave wondering if sufficient rain would keep it alive after my
departure. How long would it be before it withered and died, turning to dust?
My mom is
losing her battle with dementia and she hardly remembers her life in the correct
sequential order. We are happy when she remembers our names.
My
mother-in-law is paralyzed following a botched spinal operation and will be
sent soon to a hospice, closer to the ultimate chapter of her life. Her
beautiful blue eyes are still the eyes of the little girl she once was, not
understanding what happened, why time flew by so fast.
Bogart is our
beautiful Snow Shoe Siamese whom we adore. He is turning 18-years old sometime
this year, we don’t know when because my daughters adopted him from the pound.
The vet told us, he was one year old then. Although his previous owner abused
him in the first year of his life, we gave him a good and loving life and home.
Bogart is
showing signs of old age, turning lean and meowing more than usual, probably
from arthritis pain, but can still do a hippodrome routine once in a while, running
up and down the stairs, thinking he is a race horse. We clip his twisted claws
which sometimes get snagged or tangled on various pieces of furniture,
tapestry, or leather chairs. He is an old kitty, a centenarian in human years.
As hubby and
I are struggling with profound health issues, we are now fully realizing that
we are no longer the immortal young who thought we could live forever. It seems
like yesterday when we met, the years flew by, but we never had enough time
together, we wasted part of our youth with other spouses who were not our soul
mates.
My husband
is an American hero who dedicated his entire adult life to his country and I
hope that someday he will take his proper place at Arlington National Cemetery.
We cannot
understood why we were here on earth and why God created us, for what purpose,
but we now understand that we are no longer immortal and we hope that we are
going eventually to a good place, part of the circle of life, leaving traces of
us in our children’s DNA.
Does it
matter for most people where the final resting place will be? The sun will rise
again, rain and snow will soak the ground, the moon will cast ghostly shadows in
my beloved woods, the fierce hawkish wind will blow, and the earth will renew
itself as it had done for millennia. We become again invisible atoms in the
universe.
