WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME?

WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME?

Photo by Bruno Guerrero on Unsplash

I keep my noisy new clock where I sleep, and what with the cliché of time running out (tick-tock, tick-tock) this popped into my head last night. I wondered if I might be dead by morning. It was an idle question, not fearful. I fell asleep, and obviously I woke up. But now I am curious. I try to remember if I’ve ever been afraid of dying and come up empty. Is this something else I’ve forgotten? I’ve been curious about death, written about it, thought about it, talked about it, but can’t remember ever being afraid of it. We’re born, we live, we die. It’s a natural process, unless (as is happening all  over the world now) unless it isn’t. But never to have been concerned about my own death? Never to have been afraid of dying? Turned into nothingness? What the hell is wrong with me?

     What are the advantages? Would I appreciate life more if I feared death? No. Would I be on my best behavior all the time? Only in the unlikely event that I  suddenly believed in hell.If I were to develop an acute awareness that I am mortal, would every moment seem more precious? No, that is ridiculous. It might hang over me, like a shadow, instead of that sweet sudden awareness that I am as happy now as I’ve ever been. I’m on a roll, writing this. Where will it take me? What will I find out?

     But there is an awareness that the shadow exists.

     Well, there was that wasp. Something about that wasp keeps coming back. I discovered it clinging to the sleeve of my jacket, missing a wing. This was years ago, but still vivid in my memory. I didn’t scream or smack it away. I stared at it, wondering what it might feel like to never again be what it had always been, a creature that flew. It was so still. Maybe it was instinct that kept its remaining wing tight against its motionless body. I didn’t know. I took it off my sleeve and put it in a glass to keep it safe. I couldn’t fix it, that much I knew, but I kept looking for some sign of what it was feeling. I even grieved for it. But although it wasn’t dead, it never moved. I looked and looked, but I learned nothing. I knew only that the wasp didn’t deserve to live out what was left of its tiny life in glass. Finally I went out to the porch, held the glass over the Rose of Sharon and with some difficulty, I shook it out. When I bent over the railing to look for it, it was gone. No trace of it left.

     Death will come when it does, whether I am ready for it or not. Nothing I do or think will change that. Quaking with fear, or ready for anything,  death will show up either way. So why worry that I am not worried? Why invent a problem I don’t have? And since none of this rises to the level of mystery, I’m going to call it a conundrum and be done with it.