Our Being Series
My morning walk
Yellow and White Daffodils
Journal Entry: 1/27/18
I first noticed it yesterday on my drive up from the country. Open fields, now turning a brilliant green carpet of clover. On each ridge in a distance, you could see beautiful patches of yellow and white jonquils. Each showing proudly where families once stood. A not so distant pass, but forgotten still. Generations that were connected to nature and all that sustained that in their lives. Think how connected to nature our Native Americans were. The last totally connected civilization in our history.
On my walk this morning, I felt like Spring today. A time when nature’s renewal is just beginning. Especially near the back of my neighborhood, where Nature meets civilization. Walking the edge between two worlds that depends one on the other. Nature and Civilization...a codependent relationship that has existed from the beginning.
Nature with... her chaos, randomness and patience and on the other side this ordered and impatient but beautiful arranged gardens. Each house displaying their purple and yellow (mostly) rows of pansies, and their dogwood trees with swollen buds. The Society Garlic are standing tall with just a scent of their intentions. So many varieties pushing their way out of their winters pain and emerging into light. All are just ready to surprise you any day now with their new multi colored robe. Spring, the arrival of renewal.
I don’t know why this story keeps sticking with me this morning, but I keep thinking about a news story from a small village where I spend my summer days. Let me tell it as best as I can.
”There were two alerts sent out on Saturday, that a man and women had been missing. Francis, suffering from dementia, had gone missing from her home around noon on Friday. Robert, a 70 year old, was last seen riding his red bike out of his driveway around noon on Thursday headed south on A1A near Flagler, Florida.
After an extensive and sometimes frantic search Robert was found. Seems he had cancelled his phone service on Thursday, called the local service companies and disconnected his water, power and his cable services. Small details, but it was obvious he did not want to burden his family with clearing the details of his life.
He wrote a final goodby note and left it on his nightstand, right next to seventy three cents in change and a receipt from the local pharmacy. Robert mounted his red bike and rode about four miles to a secluded beach near an area called Bings Landing. Out of sight, and at the edge of the Inter Coastal Canal, Robert took the pills he had been saving and thought his last thoughts.
What was it like in that last moment? I suppose it was like going to sleep and never waking up.
Around noon on Saturday, a man on a red bike was spotted and oddly his name was Robert, but not our Robert. It as around 4:30 p.m. that the Sheriffs office received a ping from Robert’s cell phone. AT&T was able to activate his service and triangulated the location of his phone. It was left in the messenger bag on Robert’s old red bike.
I found it interesting that he even took his phone with him. No longer working, except for the camera and saved photos. Perhaps he took one last glance. Perhaps not, but those saved memories rode with him to his final moments.
I remember something that my Father told me once. He had been suffering from a long illness and I asked him in one of those moments of pain, “How do you hold on?”
”Never give in to the pain.”
What is it like in that last moment of humanity when one can no longer defend against the Pain? What makes one so deliberate without any notice of return from their sorrow? That feeling of something more intense than deep sadness. What was it like in that last moment?
”Was it like the feeling of falling to sleep and never waking up?”
A reporter asked Roberts son, who lives in Philadelphia, if his father had ever had thoughts of suicide? “Not to my knowledge,” he replied.
Within hours on Saturday morning, the authorities found Francis and returned her to her family. Safe and unharmed.
Our humanity...ever so fragile and delicate. Always walking that line in civilization and trying to stay connected in this Spring of renewal.
I can’t get over how beautiful my first day in spring really IS.
Doc
