Thunder is rumbling in the distance. There's a tornado watch. Only a few slight sprinkles - I hope for a real storm. My uncle has briefed me on where to go if a Tornado comes... my plan though is to put the dog in the basement and run outside. Why would a miss an opportunity to experience awe-some natural power?
I've spent the last few days visiting my grandmother in her assisted living home. It's a beautiful place. She is happy. She is healthy for a 93 year old woman. I come from rugged stock. Unusually, I am at a loss for words. The mundane everyday stories, chit-chat, feels .... indifferent. I want to be in the present. To take in the moment. The snapshot in time. There are no words - only embodiment. Awareness.
My eyes take in the wrinkled face of my grandmother. The brown liver spots. I feel the knots as I massage her shoulders. Her arms. Moving the blood and lymph. Knowing how good that feels. I think of her vanity. My mom's vanity. My own (that I try to pretend I do not have). I think about the entropy of the human body. In some ways my mom was lucky. She died young - 67 - no wrinkles, still in a prime. She didn't watch her hands age to 90. I've noticed my own hands aging this past year. My veins. My freckles, that were so cute to me a decade ago, now, not so much.
I'm thinking about my life. I'm thinking about my dreams. I'm thinking about money. I'm thinking about the future. I drive farm roads. Gravel roads. Two-lane freeways. I pass classic houses. Farm houses. Barns. Grain silos. I have lunch at "the club." Filled with parents a decade younger than I. Reminded of a recipe for life I did not follow.
At dinner with my grandmother last night I met her table mates. We had a lovely conversation. Everyone is so happy with the place - their apartments. These women, widowed. The recipe unraveling. They have lived good, satisfying lives. I know my grandmother is sad to be alone. She misses her husband of 67 years, gone at least 4. It occurs to me, I am not much unlike her, though 53 years younger, living alone...
Birth. Copulation. Death.
In the end, at the end of life, we all end up the same. Dying. Alone. Our body decaying. Disintegration. Unravelling. Part of me wants to run back to LA, to my friends. Or to the internet, to my friends. To ignore the inevitable. Instead, I sit and breath. There is nothing to do, but be present in this moment.
Driving home, through fecund fields of black soil, I think I'm more empowered than ever to follow my dreams. To live life on my terms. If the end of our lives are the same, if I'll end up a widowed (or single) woman in an assisted living home, what matters is the journey to my death.
When I am sitting around a dinner table, wrinkled face and hands, reflecting on my life. Remembering. Choked by small-talk. Will I be satisfied? Will my death by satisfied by my life? Will I have regrets? Will I have enough money to hire people (or robots) to care for me? How will my old age be different from my grandmothers?
Which leads me to reconsider my life. Am I truly, consciously living the life I desire?
The thunder has cracked and the tornado siren gone off at least 4 times as I wrote. A moist breeze comes in the open window. The dog's ears are perked at the sound of the crashes and booms. It's really quite perfect. This moment. I'm satisfied. I am living a conscious life. I know what I want, and where I want to go. Some of that I have control over. Much though, I do not. But I swim in the cocktail of life that is life. A cocktail of love and despair, hope and fear, betrayal and passion. Of moments and memories. Of possible worlds collapsing into experience. Transitioning to memory.
An ozone impregnated moment, released in expanding waves.
Thank you for your depth of sharing, and making me refelct on my own journey...
life is so awesome and mysterious.. and you are unraveling the beauty
Thank you,
Giovanna
Posted by: gio | 05/20/2014 at 04:59 PM