Beltane                                                                             New Last Frost Moon

There are times and this is one of them, when death seems behind every door.  My friend Bill has learned that his wife’s cancer is stage 4.  A grave diagnosis with a grave prognosis.   American’s exult in the streets over the death of Osama Bin Laden.  A friend sent out a quote from Martin Luther King* that expressed my feelings.  Today Vega, one of our younger dogs, tested positive for Lyme’s disease.  Not a big deal, treatable, unless the kidney is involved.  Hers may be.  If it is?  Difficult to impossible to treat.

Since I started today already in somewhat of a funk, all this darkness hovering around has reinforced it, made the day two or three shades grayer.

Death does not surprise us.  It lurks beside us all our born days until the last one.  Its reality, its starkness, its finality, especially that last one, passing from the quick to the dead, still strike heavy hammer blows to the heart.

Death’s most severe wounds come from the source of our greatest joy, love.  Without love death counts only as an incident, something happening to someone else, an event of little consequence.  We know this each day we read the obituary pages.  Even the death of someone we have known, but not loved, does not shake us at our foundations.  When, however, death comes to call for one close and important in our lives, the very bound of love lacerates the heart, accelerates our fear, amplifies our sense of loss. Continue reading Knocking on the Door →