We sold our house last year. (2017) We now live in an apartment in a 'mixed use' development. We just got too old and too many health problems to keep up a house as well as having almost priced ourself out of the neighborhood.
We've been here about nine months now. My wife used to walk here after the stores opened so she would feel safe but I never felt much like walking though my doctors have been trying to get me to do that for umpteen years. But, for the last six weeks or so I have been walking in the early morning most days. Sometimes it is down to Panera Bread. Some days just to the little performance/park area near us in the development.
Sometimes I take my breakfast or lunch with me and sit on one of the benches in the shade and let my mind drift where it will.
This was one of those mornings when I only went to the park and sat for some time. I was looking at the trees, the blue of the sky and the race betweem the upper altitude clouds and those lower. It was a beautiful morning. When I left the apartment it was 74 degrees. There was a soft breeze blowing. There were even several birds flitting around. One in particular flew in and landed on an outstretched branch quite near me. I sat there watching the bird, watching the sky behind it fading from blue to white to blue again and thinking.
Today (09/11/2018) I just sat there thinking. I was thinking how perfect the morning was and all those people I loved who are no longer here to enjoy such days. So many people who tried to live a good life, being health concious and all and still left this earth early. While I've lived a mostly self-destructive life for the past 25+ years. They're gone and I'm still here to enjoy a morning like this. Makes no sense to me. But that is reality. Some facets of reality makes no sense to even the most gifted physicists.
This has been a very bad year emotionally as I've lost (funny euphamism. they died) too many people I cared for. My brother, his brother-in-law, my youngest nephew and the woman who might (or might not) have been the mother of my youngest daughter. I mourn them all deeply and cannot bring myself to realize they are all gone. Forever. Gone.
And before this year there are so many more who have passed on. Some older which was expected but far too many who were younger. So, I sat there watching the bird, the sky, the fast moving clouds and thought about all the people I cared about who were not able to enjoy a morning like this. It is saddening, humbling and a mystery why I, who have been destroying myself for a quarter century am still here when so many who at least tried to live a healthy life are now gone.
I started counting them but there were so many I just stopped. Being born to older parents and being the youngest I guess I should expect to have lost my older relatives but I've lost so many whom were so much younger.
So very many people in my life I have cared about who no longer have the opportunity to enjoy A Morning Like This.
