Requiems

Autumn has not been kind this year. For two weeks running, we will have attended memorial services for friends stricken by cancer, and heard of and visited friends in hospitals and rehab centers. Is there an imaginary line somewhere-- like the International Date Line-- that marks the border between reasonable good health and steady decline? If so, give me the coordinates so I can steer my boat around it.

All of a sudden, all those admonitions to eat right and exercise and monitor my health sound less like ignorable nagging, and more like sensible precautions. My casual presumption that I will always be able to continue my current laissez-faire attitude toward what I do and how I do it is now subject to attack. Gone are the days of last-minute anything--everything takes longer, requires more effort, and leaves me more tired than it should. And then, there are those losses that remind me every day that life does not go on forever; that, impossible as it seems right now, I have a finite stretch of time and am definitely on the downhill side of the mountain.

I certainly plan on a few more decades, but suddenly, I am realizing that that's nowhere near a guarantee. So. It's time to submit my poems, to write that novel, to finish all those projects that languish upstairs, and maybe, just maybe, say a few 'thank yous' along the way.