Turned 55 today- (somebody say, “Babyface!”). All yesterday sat around with cousins I grew up with listening and telling old family stories, much laughing. Today finishing up sending out 23rd Beethoven Letter and spent some time in quiet stillness and gratitude at the bedside of an old friend slowly dieing as he slept a deep and peaceful sleep. Quite odd to be a speed limit age, the breakdown lane? Odd too how long life is, how many memories there are, how many people I’ve been, how many circles of people I’ve entered into and come out of, how many old family and friends have died and how many people seem quite young. I am so happy with how my life has unfolded and so happy with how full it is and filled with what I’ve chosen. But mostly lately all I really want to do is lie down, which I did much of last week, thank goodness. Smootches to so many of you I’ve know along the way, John
I’ve been in a unique position lately, helping a lovely old gay man to die. I’m not a primary caregiver or a hospice volunteer. Mostly I’m just the listener, the nice “young” gay man who can listen to what he wants to talk about when he is done discussing insurance and nurses with the important caregivers. I’m the one he can talk to about his dead lover of so many years and about his relations with men in the years since his lover died. It’s a bit odd for me to not have to offer anything other than listening, not have to work, just enjoy and show I am unafraid of his pain or his dieing.
Yesterday a hawk flew overhead with a snake in its talons. And it catches me wondering for it’s meaning.
There are times I long for the time just to see and wonder without interruption, to see the beauty, to witness against loneliness, to be in awe of creation- that’s true luxury.