I think about it all the time. I think and think about it because it is always on my mind. Hiden behind my daily thoughts. It sits and haunts me like the ticking of a clock. It says nothing but I know it is there. It moves slowly without a care. When will it take it’s pray? When will I see my last day? How will I go and will I know before it closes in and takes my soul? I can take different paths each and every day but behind me it will always stay. Haunting, waiting, picking off it’s pray. It surrounds me as I lay. Taunting me as it takes another in my place. Testing me as I watch someone else go. Filling me with more emotions than I have ever known. Do I hate it or do I respect it so? For it shows the beauty of a vessels soul and why it is so hard to let it go.
DEATH- By Cara A Johnson 5-4-2011
It is true I think about death all the time and yes I wrote that rhyme. For those of you that didn’t know I do have a poetic soul but that is enough of that. Death, him and I have a strange relationship I can’t stop thinking about it and it just doesn’t seem to stop following me. Maybe it is the older you get the more you see it or maybe it has been there the whole time and until you lose someone close to you, your eyes haven’t been opened to it yet. I remember the first time I saw death. I was no more than 13. I was hanging out with some friends listing to a pianist as I sat in a chair and like a ghost something hit me and I began to cry right then and there. I went to the bath room to get a hold of myself but I knew something was wrong because crying out of nowhere wasn’t something I did out of thin air. The next morning my parents picked me up from my friend’s house that I spent the night at from the night before, without warning they were at the door. And as I looked into their eyes I knew that someone had died. It was my great-grandmother and the funny thing was that she died around the time that I was sitting in that chair listening to the pianist play his song but what is weirdest of all is that my great-grandmother was a pianist and use to play for the silent movies when she was younge (yes she was very old and it wasn’t a huge shock when she let go but it was still the first person close to me that I had to let go).
From that day forward death and I were pretty close. The next was my friend (my brother from another motha). I spent 7 years with him going on trips, having holidays together, watching him play sports, being there for him when some bitch made him hurt. I protecting him and fought with him like I was his sister and at the end of the day I loved him like he was my own blood. He was there for me when I needed someone the most and I will never forget the day that he died. Tragic was his death. Without warning his soul gave out and died. No car crash, no drugs, he was out in the sun playing on a water bug. He had some sort of seizure and died, death just took him with no reason why. This death shook my soul and tested my will to no end...I had lost a very good friend! I still cry every time I think about it. I remember the last conversation we had...I was seeing what him and his girlfriend where doing for that weekend. I wanted them to come house sit with me but they had planes to go seadooing so he passed. At the end of our talk he said to me "talk to you later brother" and I laughed and said the same. At least I got to talk to him before death claimed his name.
Next after that it was my husband’s dad but at least I got to meet him before he passed. Then my friends and now cousins’ mom, she was a lovely laid and always made me feel at home. However the next two took their toll, it was my friends mom who was a mother to us all and my uncle who was an inspiration to me. My other mother came to me late in my life during a time I was trying to transition from those petty high school years into real life. It was hard for me to make friends but I found one at work and her mother also took me in. She showed me another way to be...more understanding, less judging, and she let me be me. I could tell her anything and she helped me out a lot. She gave me a job to help me through school, she would cook dinner for me for no reason at all, she took me on trips and hardly let me pay, and she supported my marriage decision when most people didn’t and threw me one of her emphasize parties for my bridal shower without even a thought. But the greatest thing that she did was even when she was very sick, she threw me my baby shower with all the trimmings and all the thought. And on that day she said to me "I am so tried Cara, this will be the last party that I will ever be able to throw." I couldn’t have felt more special that the last one was for me. She was an amazing and very special to me.
And as for my uncle, he was the first person to treat me like an adult. When he would come down he would ask me about my thoughts on whatever issue was on his mind. He talked to me like a real person instead of some silly kid in junior high. He generally cared about what I had to say and he never made you feel stupid and in-fact made you feel great. My uncle was a very smart man a historian by trade and I believe it was because of him that I pick history as my major and it was because of him I graduated and got that B.A. (I can only hope that I get to really use it someday). The last time I saw him it was on my birthday 8 months pregnant and like 100 degrees that day. I went outside to get some air; sick as he was he followed me without a care. We sat down and didn’t say a word and then he asked me in his way "So Cara what are your thoughts about pregnancy?" It was the first non-annoying question of that day...not how are you feeling, are you tired, or any kind of generic question that just pissed off my nerves on that day. That was my uncle, clever in his ways he always knew how to get things out of me, he always knew what to say. He passed a few months ago and when I went to his "funeral" he still know what to say. On his funeral card his quote said:
I have always known
That at last I would
Take this road, but yesterday
I did not know that it would be today.
Narithtra, translated by Kenneth Rexroth,
One Hundred Poems from the Japanese
This quote set my mind at easy because I knew that he was okay. He was happy with the life he had and had accepted the road in front of him. And if there is one thing that I would say to death before he took my soul it would be "thank you for waiting to take my life because the one that I was allowed to live, I believe I had the time to make it mine. Sure I had my ups and my downs but when push comes to shove I enjoyed it all around. I may have not done everything I wanted to do but I accomplished as much as time would allow me too."
I dont not fear or hate death nor would have any regrets. Just like those before me I would know that I was loved, I would know that I tried, and I know (especially threw my son) I had left something behind. Death is not a horrible thing to me, it is the end of this world and hopefully the beginning of something other to be. I am not a religious person but I hope there is a god but if there is not I know that I will always live on for many years to come in the hearts and souls of those that carry my memory with them and that is enough for me to make death a precious and beautiful thing. Death gives you the chance to feel things that would never be able to feel for a person and shows all of us the human or soul that is inside but most of all it gives us a chance to honor someone’s life. No matter how we go death brings darkness but opens up our souls to a different light.
Thank you for reading and until next time!
