It's been awhile...

I doubt this post will be met with much fanfare: not having too many readers, and not posting for... um... an inexcusable amount of time, means that this new post most likely will not register a 'blip' on anyone's screen.

I think I'm okay with that.

I think I'll just make this a 'me' kind of thing. I'll heartily welcome anyone who comes along, but I think I need to ignore the fact that there may be any sort of audience; it doesn't do me any good anymore. It just leads to a performance of words, and I am hardly a virtuoso when it comes to that.

Life, as of late, has been whipping around so violently that it has reached a standstill: the virtual eye of a hurricane. It has been one long series of possibilities and questions: 'Will we be...?' 'Should we...?' 'If so, what about?' 'Can we afford...?' 'What is out there?' Move to one direction, and find out that it's not the one. Turn in another and discover what you've been expecting- really, what you've taken to be your sure thing suddenly fails to materialize.

And just like that, you're in the eye. Because anything and everything you've been expecting to happen isn't happening and you can't make it happen no matter how hard you want it to happen because you don't have the power to make things happen all of the time.

Here's the thing, though: you don't travel with the hurricane, though. You can't keep pace with the eye and wait and pray that it hits dry land and collapses on itself. You know that just behind you, coming fast, is the trailing arc of the maelstrom, and you have just these few moments of clarity before it all begins again. There's fear, but it's not a fear for your safety: rather, it's fearing where you may end up.

Here's what my moment of clarity is amounting to: you do, because you'll die.

A seminary I attended briefly a little over a year ago still has my email address, and viciously won't let it go. Not that I particularly mind, as often there is a richness to what I receive (unless it's around the beginning of the semester, in which case it then becomes a series of dull school reminders about tuition checks and early registration bonuses). Whether I was thrilled with their theology is certainly a matter of debate. But there was genuine embracement of community, art, culture, and courage to ask the big questions (what I found so fucking annoying was their stubborn resistance to even try to answer them).

Two days ago, there was a bulletin sent out, with the subject line an alarming 'Prayers desperately needed'. It seemed a former student and now a practicum facilitator had suffered a brain aneurysm and was undergoing surgery. The prognosis: grave.

I prayed. Not well, but then again, who does?

Yesterday, there was another email sent out, this one bearing nothing but the woman's name in the subject line. It wasn't hard to deduce the contents of that email.

During the night, she had passed away.

I can't claim any special knowledge of the deceased: I may have had a class with her. Then again, I may not have. There is a vulturish tendency, whenever a tragedy strikes, to exaggerate one's relationship with the victim (unless you're Job). A casual acquaintance who dies in a car accident suddenly becomes, once you relate the story to someone else, a close friend. A murder takes place a few streets away in your neighborhood, and you tell everyone you know that it happened right there, while you point at the black macadam running past your front porch.

The email had a picture of the deceased at the bottom of it: a lovely woman in graduation robes with a Colgate smile and kind eyes. She couldn't have been more than 26.

I am so sorry for her- so sorry for her family. All of those at the seminary feel a loss, whether they were close to her or knew her merely at a passing glance. Or not at all, like me. But it touches everyone because it is such a horrific waste.

I don't know if she was doing everything she wanted to be do in her life right up until the end (most likely not), or what good works she hath wrought in this life.

Let me bare my soul here a bit (the fact that few are reading gives me the courage to do so), and say that this terrifies me deeply. 'Dropping dead' scares the shit out of me. But it happens, and the shock and pain of it reverberates through the community so deeply that it even impacts those who are observing from the periphery (such as myself). And if it happens... when? What are the signs? Can you tell? Is it possible that you wake up with an inkling and try to stretch the day as long as possible, or do those last few things you never had a chance to do?

I don't know.

I've got good genes. Odds are I'll live a long and healthy life, passing away at a ripe old age with oatmeal slowly crusting at the corner of my mouth. But there are no guarantees.

And so, being trapped in this brief lull of the storm as I am, the questions that created the hurricane in the first place are taking on a slightly different tenor. It is no longer a matter of 'should we...?' 'Ought we...?' 'Can we afford...', but rather 'what do I want to do in this life, and have I done it?' 'What do I really believe, and what have I done because of it?'

There's nothing wrong with the storm. Not really: we all need these moments in life, for that is how we safeguard our security. But if it all becomes about nothing but security, pleasing the boss, fulfilling your quota, having a house and cars equal to those of your peers and nothing else... well, it's no wonder that so many people die with a startled expression on their faces. It's that last minute realization before the darkness that everything you've had no longer belongs to you. Instead, it'll be divvied up by the surviving relatives.

But that which you have done, those works that you have wrought, those dreams that you harbored and finally fulfilled... those live on.

The good is oft interred with your bones.