What Is It All About?

As I put my arms around my dear friend of many years, hugging her and saying my condolences for the loss of her very sweet and angelic mom, many thoughts and feelings glide over me. That’s an all too familiar feeling of loss, the one that once you live long enough there’s no escaping from it and after a while it seems to have become too rampant.

When I lost my parents and my only sister, in addition to feeling terribly sad I also felt awful for their not so easy lives. I couldn’t help but think how much each and every one of them had suffered throughout their lives. Their hardships and heartaches stood out in my mind and kept coming back to wring my heart out, till there were tears no more. Realistically, there’s no one that can dodge being hurt in life, is there? However, at some point most of us come to a realization that we must pick ourselves up and move on.

While I’m thinking and reflecting about the sad departure of loved ones and the people that I’ve known, my focus turns inwards to my own mortality and the unavoidable departure at last. Many thoughts, ideas, hopes and plans come to my mind but at the end I am left with one final thought, or rather a wish, a hope.

I hope that when finally death knocks at my door, whenever that might be that I would have been able to have come up with the best answer to one of my many nagging questions that haunts me from time to time. Before I go I would like to know for myself what this life was all about. If I figure this one out then I can happily rest in peace and all would have been worth it.


Photo Credit: APOD, NASA