What do we do when death seems to win the day?
She laughed until she was gasping for air and wiping her eyes. Doubled over, she grabbed the back of the park bench to help her sit before she lost her balance. She looked up, her twinkling eyes still wet, and tried to talk, but couldn’t.
“I’m telling you the truth. He actually did that.”
The laughter began again.
“Twice!”
“Stop!” she breathed, “I feel like I’ve done a hundred sit-ups already.”
He sat beside her then and pulled her into his arms.
“I love your laugh,” he murmured into her hair.
“Oh now you’re just making excuses for my nearly wetting my pants.”
He chuckled.
“Even if,” he said, “Even then it would be small payment for the sound of your laugh. I could listen to that music every day of my life.”
A small smile crossed his lips as he remembered. Then the steady rhythm of the heart monitor pulled him back to the present. She lay there under the white blankets, as still as the dawn on their first day of married life, as soft as her whispers each night before they both drifted to sleep.
“Don’t go,” he choked, “Don’t leave me. I’ll tell you a million funny stories every single day if you’ll just stay.”
The heart monitor quickened, then settled again to its rhythmic pace.
He wandered over to the closet where only her bare essentials were. How did life distill to a few things in a plastic bag? He pulled out her purse and rummaged through it. Lipstick, a comb, her billfold. He opened it. Ten dollars, her license with the picture she hated, two credit cards. There. There was a slip of paper folded and refolded. He pulled it out. Her handwriting danced across a page that held only the faintest scent of her. He held it up to his nose and inhaled deeply. Then he read: Dearest, This is in case I don’t make it. Maybe sometime soon, I’ll be rummaging through my things and find this note and we can both have a laugh over my dramatics. But even if . . . even then I want you to know I love the way you make me laugh, so don’t cry too much. It’ll make your nose red. On the hard days, just listen until you hear something that reminds you of the good times. Of my love. And, if you insist, my laugh. Someone said: “Life is eternal; and love is immortal; and death is only a horizon; and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.”
The rhythm slowed, and he hurried to her bed and grabbed her hand.
“Thank you,” he said.
And all sound stopped except the echo of her laughter.
Quote: attributed to William Penn, Ralph Waldo Emerson, or R.W. Raymond; I’ll Be Seeing You: Words by Irving Kahal and Music by Sammy Fain, 1938, Sung here by Frank Sinatra
I read something about someone who was described as an accidental icon. Wouldn’t that lend excitement to your days?!
Most of us don’t set out to be icons, but we don’t propose to live accidentally either. We have plans that we follow rather lazily or like gangbusters depending on our age, energy, and personality.
And then there are those who seem to cut a path that puts the rest of us to shame. Too often those individuals are renounced, diminished, or just plain cut out of a story that, but for their influence, would have a very different ending. We do well to read their autobiographies or, sans that, their biographies if said biographies are written by dependable authors.
Winston Churchill is a large figure in post WW II history. A recent movie about him received justifiable accolades. He was a man in power during a time in which history’s hinge would swing one way or the other. He stood strong and unyielding when giving in to political pressure would have made his life easier. He said, If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves. He was a fighter. Everyone loves a lover, but sometimes a fighter is what is needed.
A four page government memo was released today. It reveals deceit and duplicity among those who were supposed to be trustworthy and straightforward. The crimes were committed not by the many hard-working members of the DOJ and FBI. They were committed by a powerful few, and not once, but repeatedly. I suspect the path of the memo will lead to names we all know and people who believe they are untouchable. Now we wait to see if they will get away with it because of their power and connections. I hope not.
One wonders what role those of us without prominence or power play. We don’t have 
the influence some others do. But still we can take a page from someone we admire. After all, citizens of good character who stand straight and strong and who do whatever it is at their hand to do with honor and care are more 
likely to hold a nation up than bring it to its knees. We’re not just a thousand points of light. We’re a thousand steel beams, a thousand iron plates, a thousand rivets and bolts.
Iris Apfel, the accidental icon referred to at the beginning of this post has said, You have to try it. You have only one trip. You’ve got to remember that.
Have a great day! Me? I’ll be doing my best to stand straight and strong, to do whatever is at hand to do as though I’m doing it for God, Himself, as I keep walking the path. I hope to see you on the way!
Quote: Rick Lowry in the New York Post, 12/28/17; Quote: Winston Churchill; Memo: http://static.foxnews.com/pdf/370598711-House-Intelligence-Committee-Report-On-FISA-Abuses.pdf ; Quote: George H.W. Bush; Photos: Pexels.com; Quote: Iris Apfel