Strength

Strength does not count where death is concerned. It makes the best of us weak in the knees and the most, a living being can do is either ignore the fact or cry our hearts out. Being a photographer makes having pictures a haunting reality or a breath of fresh laughter. Sometimes they end up becoming tear-stained photographs or end up as a memorial on your mantle above the fireplace. How quickly time moves. Eleven years, twelve years, sixteen years...these numbers are a lifetime when you spend every waking day with someone you love. The weakest point is when you see their age and their struggle to stay with you for just one more day.

One more day and all of a sudden they are old. One more day and you see all their aches and pains they never complained about, until that one day when walking is the hardest thing to do and the most natural and then that one day to rise, open your eyes with no ability at all to move. Seventy-seven is young, eighty-seven is young, but ninety-seven is truly pushing the clock. And what quality of life can one have at an age so far from the other side of living? Losing someone at that age is bearable. You know their life was long and at least fair.

How does it happen, though? A week, maybe a month passes, and all of a sudden you see the distance. That undeniable road that has been traveled, the very one that makes you look back in time with a question that propels you to ask, "For what purpose outside of time spent and the love shared?" The legacy of a life left behind. All for one short span of experiencing love, heartbreak, struggle, happiness, and abundance. A heart that gets mended through time. I was told long ago by a very dear friend ..."grieve not for the ones gone before, but for the ones left behind, who walk with you, side by side." That sticks out so clearly in my mind. Whenever Death decides to visit my universe and someone close to me has traversed, this saying always comes to mind.

As sleep is Death's brother, age is Death's sister, and what a feisty bitch she can be! She is holding the clock of days in her right hand while twisting and turning that windup tool with her left hand until it's tight. The pain is tied up and expressed in the wrinkles around the eyes, one more twist...and one more turn and it pops! The clock is essentially broken and when the time winds down, reality will melt into that illusory ploy that it is and what we call Death becomes our ageless friend.

Strength, then, is found in the light of our aged and lifeless bodies we have left behind while the young sit with questions and others shake in disbelief.

Hell? I refuse to believe that life is hell on earth. But what of other similar expressions can be said when all pain leaves the body and the soul is free? Our carbon footprints are now released from this Universe or its' multiverse. Our energy is spread across the faces of loved ones, brushed lightly; secretly slipping in and out of our dreams, and stamped permanently on our frontal lobes.

Strength comes when we choose to keep living. Strength comes when we choose to decide that no matter how many souls are freed in our lifetime, we will not be moved to despair, because this too shall pass. Strength comes when we believe we will connect with them again. Strength comes when we decide to continue to play out Act lll of our lives. Strength comes when we decide not to die, but to accept death as a part of life. And the best part of it all is the strength to smile, when our throats can barely utter the words, "Good=Bye".