Three deaths last week. Well, two and a half, counting one that went a while back, but whose memorial among his friends will take place in mid-May. I am reminded that I am to read a poem. It might be this one, of Tolkien's. I love it, for the reminder of what is some day to come. And the second day of May seems a timely day for it. When spring is come round again, filling our eyes, filling our ears, filling us up with our very lives.
A man I knew in high school was one of the three. He was a diabetic with severe kidney failure. Three weeks before his death, he took himself off of dialysis and went home. Facebook began showing me pictures of Bob eating one favorite meal after another. He died last week.
Another Bob from our class responded this way:
Old Age Requires the Greatest Courage
(for Bob Reuler)
The greatest courage is not needed for war,
but for ordinary people growing old.
Like soldiers, the aged are never very far
from death: many are called,
all are chosen. A soldier faces danger
then retreats, but for the old, going back
is not possible; they may hunger
for youth but pray for the luck
of a quick death. When one by one
the body’s systems fail, they must be brave
and face annihilation of the flesh and bone,
the Soul clinging like a shipwrecked sailor, to love;
finally, that’s all we are given
to navigate between exhaustion and heaven.