LIFE GOES ON

                                                         

I have neighbors next door who have lived along side of us, here at the lake, for over twenty-five years. Over the years, we became the best of friends. We traveled and played together on vacations and we fished and swam together down at the beach. We ate many meals together and drank pots of coffee trying to solve all of our problems. We watched each others grandkids grow up, shared our pets and remembered each other’s birthdays and anniversaries. Then it all changed.

It seemed to unravel the most when my wife died and we were no longer a foursome. It was as if it was awkward to go anywhere, not paired up. So they stopped asking. We had this ugly glass plate I bought at an auction that said happy anniversary on it and each year we would wrap it up in gift paper and exchange it on our anniversaries, just as a joke. I think we got the better of the deal because their anniversary was just a couple of months after ours so we didn’t have to hold it very long. We spent long afternoons together sitting on the deck, in the shade of the house, gossiping and getting to know each other’s lives like our very own. We held keys to each other’s houses and kept a careful eye on the others property.

Then a couple of weeks ago the “For Sale” sign went up next door. I stood and looked at it, and as much as I understood why-- because of their health and taking care of the place-- it seemed like such a tragic end to our friendship. Oh, I know they’re only going back to the cities and it’s not that far away. But life has taught me that most friendships are cemented in common interests like work or play and that’s something that isn’t going to exist any more. To be truthful, for me, it left when my wife died. I have gone to so many funerals of people I haven’t seen for years. Maybe that's why the words, “Paying your final respects,” was coined.

So new neighbors huh? One of the things that happens, as you age, is you don’t tolerate change as well any more. You like the status quo. It’s predictable and you don’t like surprises anymore. Maybe its because you had nothing to compare it to when this all started and now you do and that can be very unfair but it’s human nature. Life, at least for me, is like a series of earthquakes. For years there were always little tremors that came and went and you rolled with the punches. A little damage here or there, but nothing earth shattering. Then the death of a partner and the 9.2 that rocks your world and three years later you’re still recovering. But what is the most bothersome now to me, are the aftershocks, like the end of a friendship. Each one makes you flinch a little because you don’t want to see them coming. Each one makes you a little weaker and you start to realize your own fragility.

We need to live life in the moment and I know that’s easy to talk about and hard to do. In A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Poo. Poo ask’s, “What day is it?” “It’s today,” squeals piglet. “My favorite day,” says Poo. That’s the attitude we need. If only we could convince ourselves that it is us, and not future events that determine if we are going to be happy tomorrow or not. Each day we live, prepares us for the next one but we shouldn’t have to worry about the next day until it gets here.

BUCKET LIST

Since Jack Nicolson and Morgan Freeman costarred in the movie “The Bucket List,” I have heard many people refer to their own wishes and ambitions for the future as their bucket lists. I think it’s noble to have a list of goals and ambitions you would like to accomplish within your lifetime. It may even fall under the guise of good planning. One big difference for most of us is—as it applied to the two actors in the movie—they had an end date in their story, and most of us don’t. So, does it really fall under the guidelines of a true bucket list, when you have no timeline to complete whatever it is you want to do? Common sense tells us we all have an end date, but fortunately, no one has spelled it out for us. When I was married, my wife hinted at one for me if I didn’t change my ways, but thank God, it never came to that.

As I remember in the movie, Jack & Morgan had a written list, and not just some things that were on the top of their minds to accomplish someday. They also put them in some kind of chronological order where we, who have no written list to refer to, tend to not prioritize things but say, “If the opportunity presents itself, I would like to go here or do this.” I, personally, still have a bucket list, or at least, I think I do, but it’s not written in stone, or anywhere else for that matter. I have taken things off my bucket list because they were no longer physically possible or monetarily feasible, and I have added new things that I didn’t know existed when I started the list and I’m not sure if that’s legal or not. I’ve taken things off the list because, truth be told, I can’t remember what the heck it was I was going to do, anyway.  Heck, I’ve even put things back on my list that were once on it, and that I had already done, because I had so much fun I wanted to do them again. If I had a written list, I probably couldn’t do it anyway because, if you’ve seen my desk, you would know that I wouldn’t be able to find it even if I wanted to. Also, if I did find it and it was written in cursive, by me, I wouldn’t be able to read it either.

So, for the most part, I fly by the seat of my pants. I say “for the most part” because someone else has come into my life. Most of the things I want to do involve her now, and she is incredibly organized, so I defer to her in such matters. Now, that being said, it makes sense that some of the things that are on my list, and not on hers, and vice versa, need to be negotiated if we are going to do them at all.  I don’t think she has any interest in tipping cows, so that’s off the list. One of the things that is so ironic about this whole bucket list thing, at least for me, is this—she was once on my bucket list.

In the end, I think many of us have one thing in common on our bucket lists, and like Morgan and Jack, it will be the last thing on our list because, at least in my Christian belief, you can only experience it once and it will be the last thing you do. It’s the one thing that takes you to the next level after death, and it is something you talked about accomplishing all of your earthily life. I’m talking about getting your hand stamped at those heavenly gates and being invited in. It’s something you prayed and worked for all of those years and it’s something that should be on everyone’s bucket list.

FAREWELL TO SUMMER

                                              

So it’s the weekend after Labor Day Weekend in the lakes country. It’s a time that is a simple carbon copy of yesterday except the sunlight is three minutes shorter and its strangely quiet at the lake today. Memorial day and Labor Day, the alpha and the omega of summer, have come and gone and now we wait. We wait for the leaves that are already turning, to fall from the trees. We wait for eager children, with backpacks on, crowding onto school buses once again. We wait for the orange-coated hunters and the shooting to began. The fields will be stripped of their bounty and grain bins and corm cribs will be full to bursting at the seams. We wait for that morning when you wake up and the ground is white once more and fall and summer will have slipped quietly away and it’s one more summer for the old memory bank.

Late fall and the months of the year seem to share a likeness that tugs at an old mans heartstrings, because the calendar of months and days of the year seem so intertwined with our own inner calendar. The white hair, wrinkles and sore joints, are so reminiscent of better days, like a summer now gone by. But then the last days of many things in our life, evoke some degree of sadness. All good things do come to an end. Be it the last day on your job before retirement or maybe your kids moving out and moving far away. Maybe it’s the death of a loved one and the end of an era. Maybe it’s your favorite Pastor at your church moving away. Life seems to be full of a litany of sad endings for all of us.

But as sad as the end of summer is and all of the other changes that are coming our way, there is a glimmer of hope, that in a few months the earth will tilt in our favor again and a Minnesota summer will come back to please us once more. That many of these sad endings I just mentioned, are just preludes to new beginnings. One door closes, another opens. We have no idea when we too will end our journey and be called home and little control over it; so sad endings are best forgotten until we have to deal with them. Maybe forgotten is a bad choice of words because some things do need remembering but at the very least we need to set them aside and try not to let them ruin the future. Tears are put there to wash away our sadness and pave the way for a smile but at least for a while you need to let them fall. For every friend you lose, the opportunity is there for a new one in your circle of life-- if you only look around. I have many dear old friends but as precious as they are, there is always room in my life for another.

But back to the end of summer. Mother nature is a busy gal and she needs a break and winter gives her that time to rest. For it’s in winter that the plants and many of the animals go to sleep too. Those that don’t either leave or take it easy for a while. But for mankind, we are driven and there is no resting until the body and mind simply won’t respond anymore. Then all we can do is dip into our memory bank and redigest the good times once more. Lauren DeStefano wrote and I quote. “Fall has always been my favorite season. The time when everything bursts with its last beauty, as if nature had been saving up all year for the grand finale.”

AUGUST THOUGHTS

  There comes a time at the lake in late August, when it suddenly dawns on you that another summer has quietly passed you by and you scarce remember it. It seems only yesterday that the colorful crocuses were poking their heads out of the last vestiges of the melting snow pack. They were followed by a litany of different flowers, each announcing itself in another time and place, in the days of the summer season.  But now, suddenly it seems, we are down to the mums and some late season daylilies. Out on the lake the lily pads bruised and tattered as they may be, from summer storms and boats, still bob in the swells but soon they too will slip below the surface.

In the background, as I look out my window, I hear the sweet sounds of ‘Danny Boy’ playing.  “For summers gone and all the flowers dying. ‘tis you, ‘tis you, must go and I must bide.” Solitary Leaves are beginning to float down now. Early quitters, they are, falling from the protective canopies above us and calling it a summer. Along the roads the sumac is turning scarlet and red berries crown the bushes, waiting for a chance to plant their ripe seeds in mother earth. But first, like us, they must endure another winter. “But come ye back when summers on the meadow.” Yes, at some point in time we will relent and at some point, we, like those early quitters, will call it a summer too and sit back and bide our time and wish for at least one more summer to come upon the meadow, so we can do it all over again.

For in the troughs’ of old age it’s so easy to draw parallels between the earths’s seasons and our own waxing, waning, lives. My personal roll call shows several more friends and family members who have had their last summer. But if you fall as all the flowers are falling and if you’re dead as dead you well may be. I’ll come and find the place where you are lying and kneel and say an Ave there for thee. For far to long we have said “goodbye” mostly as a polite formality but now after we have said “goodbye” so many times over fallen friends and family, we have recognized the finality of that statement and those sad goodbye’s fall on ears that have been silenced forever but never forgotten.

But its summer and not life we are bidding farewell to this time and we know that’s not the end of life as we know it. Alexander Pope said, “Hope springs eternal in the human breast.” He meant that even in the face of adversity, be it winter or our fading lives we have hope for another go around. Hope, like our creator, is eternal and when all else fails we draw upon it. Soon the rustle of leaves will be replaced by the first snows of winter and we will bide our time once more, like the Gaelic songwriter wrote in Danny Boy, “And when the valleys hushed are white with snow.” Patiently we wait for the summer to descend on the meadows once more. We have learned to cope through the difficult winter months and the anticipation of spring and summer is never far from our minds and as the earth tilts in our favor once more, those colorful crocuses will emerge once more, signaling that life goes on within the ranks of the flowers and so it will go on for us too.