Why so Glum?
Death – why the glum face?
Have we not taunted you
Down all these long years?
Expected you are every turn?
Yet you only showed your face
In pictures, films and stories
From near and afar,
Rarely robbing our own homes.
For isn’t the firework
All the more exciting
For its brief moment
Of glory?
Isn’t the taste
So much
Sweeter
When fleeting
And gone?
For death
You have added piquancy
To an already
Spicy dish –
I thank you.
At the end of every road
We must turn
The final bend.
And weary from travelling
Welcome it
As the conclusion
Of a wondrous
Journey.
So death – be not glum.
You have served me well
And we are well met.
Opher 24.4.2016
Why so glum?
My book – The Death Diaries – simmers on my computer. It is the work of a life-time. I am searching for the ending. Who knows what form that might take?
Looking back through life one realises that it is death that has created the excitement. We dare to invite and taunt, to test out our mortality. Our tales are of daring, where we have cheater the grim reaper of times when we have gambled and survived, pitted our skills against a deadly enemy. We have eaten of the bacon and ice-cream without a thought for the heart as if it could not happen to us. We have learnt the bike into the bend hoping that friction and gravity conspire to bring us back up again.
Every brush with possibility creates another story – and we laugh the harder that it was so close we felt its breath.
What would life be without it? And which would be the more terrifying?
For every journey ends – some far too soon – some before the flames has burned low – and now, when we have a life so well used, we can look back and celebrate. For death you played your part well.