Aging Our Souls
“It wasn’t snowing, and then it was…”
-From Dorianne Laux’s poem, Snow
DMX the rapper was here, and then he wasn’t.
The Prince (whoever he was) was here, and then he wasn’t.
My first cousin, only weeks away from her fifty-fifth birthday was here, and then she wasn’t.
I was feeding my sons lunch. We were at Shake Shake eating hot dogs. The boys were having shakes. One chocolate, one vanilla. They spilled the chocolate one and we left the restaurant with a mess.
That’s when the phone rang. It was my mom calling to tell me my cousin had suddenly passed away.
I hate it when people say tragedy comes in threes.
Seems like these days, tragedies come in multiples of threes. Nines. No, twelves. Maybe fifteens. No, eighteens. Eighteen is more like it.
We probably experience eighteen tragedies a day. And by we, I mean all of us. The world. It’s spinning, and as it does, so does it send us test after test, pushing us harder, deeper into our psyches.
Aging our souls.
There is no preparation, it seems for what’s around the corner. The only thing we can control is the moment at hand. And we can only be aware of it for that exact amount of time.
We can only watch sometimes as life unfolds. How something is there, and then it isn’t. Or how it isn’t, and then it is.
There wasn’t a pandemic, and then there was.
There was sunshine and a future, and hope, and then there wasn’t.
We were weak, and then we were strong. There was a test, and then we passed it. There was a challenge, and then we surpassed it.
There was sorrow, and then, there wasn’t.
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Photo by Marek Studzinski on Unsplash