who knows?

Scarlett: Rhett, how could you do this to me, and why should you go now that, after it's all over and I need you, why? Why?

Rhett Butler: Why? Maybe it's because I've always had a weakness for lost causes, once they're really lost. Or maybe, maybe I'm ashamed of myself. Who knows?

-from the film Gone With the Wind

 

 

What is a beautiful life? What is a good death? Forgive my moroseness, I had a rotation in hospice nursing this week and my mind is just jumbled mush today. I feel like I loose my threading and the tapestry of my mind becomes all tangled and knotted - I can't make sense of it.

 

A beautiful life to me isn't about objects that shine or materials that can be bought. Anyone with a visa can have that. I want something that is priceless - that can't be purchased - that can't be lost. If my home gets destroyed by a fire, swept away by a flood, or blown away by a tornado - I want to see that wreckage in all its devastation and I know I didn't lose a thing, not a single thing of real importance as long as the one I love wasn't in it. That would be a loss. That would be something for which there is no recovery.

 

Death feels wrong - doesn't it? Were we made to die originally? Weren't we supposed to live forever? Never getting old, never getting sick, never getting tired and weak. Every day of life brings us one step closer to our death. Will it be a car accident, a heart attack, a malignant tumor? How will it end? Will politics matter, or sport team preference, or ability to name every tune on classic rock radio profit or change anything in that moment when you die? I don't think so, why then do we credit so much importance to these things now?

 

I talk too much and I say too little. God delivers but on his time. He says be patient and we have no choice but to be... don't we...? Is there romance in waiting or just endless prolonged agony?

Regarding Jane Austen's book Persuasion, "It's about... waiting. These two people meet. They almost fall in love, but the timing isn't right, and they have to part. Then, years later, they meet again. They get another chance. But they don't know if too much time has passed, if they've waited too long, if it's too late for things to work out."