Today I Am Alive
Today I am alive.
So was my neighbour a few weeks ago. Then he died suddenly in his sleep. We had just been talking at the hedge that divides our gardens. It was the place we often talked. I was not aware that this would be our last conversation. The last sound of his voice. Three weeks later we released his ashes into the Danube River. His wife wanted a farewell, not a funeral. I watched from the boat as my neighbour floated down the river. Three weeks earlier I had watched as they carried my neighbour down the stairs from his bedroom where he had slept his final sleep. I watched as they placed him in a long box and closed the lid. And carried him out.
I watched and thought to myself: this is me. I’m looking at my future self. It’s a matter of time and a sequence of breaths. My life is a slow-burning candle that any capricious breeze can just as suddenly snuff out. Earlier that morning I had been reflecting on a line from an ancient poem written by Moses:
“We live for seventy years or so – with luck we might make it to eighty – and what do we have to show for it? Trouble. Toil and trouble and a marker in the graveyard”.
As I sit here in my chair this morning I do not feel angry or even afraid about becoming a marker in the ground. But I do feel vulnerable with my own disappearances. I also feel that I want to fully indwell my vulnerability, not run from it. Where could I hide anyway? I now hug my wife in the kitchen a bit longer each day, and a bit more often. And I speak more kindly to myself. The day will come when there will be a reformatting of the sentence: “Today I am alive”. When the “today” and “alive” parts are deleted what remains is: “I am”. The hope of this is enough. For me. Today.
Roberto, October 2017
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“To fully indwell my vulnerability”…now that’s a worthwhile goal. Thanks Roberto for this reflection, which is packed with so many
thoughts that are worth some concentrated thought. JKG
Beautiful thoughts Roberto. I loved how you moved me from sadness to reflection to the warmth of a hug and into eternity. I just told my wife there is enough in your last few lines to keep me pondering and doing for a month. Thanks for taking the time to ponder and share.
I had a conversation about a similar scenario today; talking about someone who was taken ‘before their time’. We asked the question, so how do you respond? How do you live well in light of this reality? We reflected on all of life’s little moments, the day to day, the so called mundane – that we can enjoy and celebrate these things, rather than feel they are to be endured. As you say Robert, being in the kitchen with your wife can now be a ‘special moment’ rather than an ‘ordinary’ one.
Thanks Ju for bringing this beautiful piece of text back to our attention. Having just finished the livestream service for the funeral of my sister-in-law these are the meditative words I needed!
Yes. What a treasure this little reflection is. It was again so for me, alive today.