IT'S A WONDERFUL WORLD

                                               

That say that when your passing away, your life and everything you accomplished during the trip flashes before your eyes.  I’m not sure who it was who died and came back to share that with us but I’ll take it for what its worth because I’ve been told, that’s there story and they’re sticking to it and who am I to refute it. I find it somewhat believable because even though I’m still on top of the grass I find myself having little flashbacks from time to time and I hope I’m not gearing up for something bigger and all of this ruminating is just that-- reminiscing that old people do. I do hope this however. That before that time comes, that somehow I will be able to edit this trip down memory lane because I do think it’s a brief one and there are a lot of things yours truly did in his life that he’s not really that proud of, so why bring that stuff back up. No sense getting to the pearly gates with a bad taste in your mouth. That is if the pearly gates are really where I’m heading but that’s a story for another column.

I always remember a song, by that old, beloved gravely voice singer Satchamo-- aka Louie Armstrong-- who sang, “It’s a wonderful world.” In it Louie sings about all of the things he see’s that makes this world such a wonderful world to live in.  He sees the trees of green, red roses, skies of blue and clouds of white. The colors of the rainbow and friends walking by.  Yes, friends shaking hands and saying, “I love you.” And that my friend is the point I’m getting to. That all of those things we witnessed and accomplished in this trip we call life, have little significance when we think about the friends we have made and the people we have loved.

Today as I write this two of my friends are seriously ill with cancer and both are in the fight of their lives’. It is for me another poignant moment in my life, knowing the fight they are in. I am at a point in my life where this happens a lot but it doesn’t make it any easier to accept. I have said before that I have a wonderful memory and I feel blessed to have it. I have found myself on occasion going back in time and thinking about all of the friends I have had, the places I have been and the things I have accomplished. Yes, you don’t need to be on the way out to take this trip through life. But I’m having second thoughts about maybe editing this trip, as I mentioned earlier as the right thing to do, for we need those wrongs for the bad example if nothing else and the resolve to not do them again.

As for the future I think Robert Frost said it best, in his poem, “Stopping by woods on a snowy evening” when he said,

“The woods are lovely dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.”