Gather Ye Rosebuds...
by JeffLieber
Sun Jul 20, 2008 at 09:00:55 PM PDT
A few thoughts on "good-bye" and "see you next year" and... I guess... the current political climate.
True story:
- JeffLieber's diary :: ::
It's a decade ago and there's this good family friend of my parents, a woman in her late 40's at the time.
Let's call her Ann.
Ann is a true force of light, with a laugh that can turn any joke into a happening.
The occasion was the one-year anniversary of Ann's father's death and she and her mother decide to go to the graveyard to visit the burial site.
They park the car and cross the grounds, barely noticing a man on riding mower cutting the grass.
Ann and her mother sit on a bench, near her father's grave. They are side by side. Inches apart. Facing the headstone with the rest of the cemetery behind them.
And as they sit, the man on the riding mower turns... now heading right towards them.
But Ann and her mother don't pay that any mind.
Why should they, right?
They're too busy rummaging through years of memories... cherishing someone lost, but not completely gone... recounting, maybe, moments they took for granted.
And then... it happens.
The blade on the riding motor hits a rock and breaks off... flying through the air... spinning as it sails one hundred feet before lodging in Ann's lower back, severing her spinal cord.
Anne falls to the ground in a heap, unconscious, and when she finally awakens, what was done was done.
She's a paraplegic, with no movement from the shoulders down.
She'll never walk again... never dance... never rise to open the shades to see what the weather is like.
There was a lawsuit and an insurance settlement and a sizable pay-out and NOT SURPRISINGLY this amazing soul has found a way to go on and find meaning and STILL, often, be the light in the room (along, of course, with many long, awful days of "what if" and "why me" and "why, Dear God, ANYONE").
My mother sees Ann almost every week and when she does, Anne's laughter still rings out.
I tell the above, mostly, selfishly (as all blogging REALLY is) to remind MYSELF that when one says "goodbye" and "see you next year" and even, politically, considers whether NOW is our time, that no moment should ever be squandered when fate and happenstance and true random tragedy exists in the world.
Nothing left to do now but fly home, kiss my children heartily, and cue the Robert Herrick...
To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he's to setting.That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry:
For having lost but once your prime,
You may for ever tarry.