Barb

Time and life have a pace all their own.

Waiting for something wonderful can seem to take an eternity, while enduring something awful sometimes stretches time to its limits. It doesn't seem fair, but fairness is not a concept that occurs to nature.

Although it does seem that life has a certain amount of compensation if I am willing to step back and look at it from a distance. Compensation, not tit for tat, nor even in any kind of order that I can figure out and count on in any certain way, but a general way of winding around here and there, touching on the good and the bad, the exultant and the devastating over and over again throughout a span of time I call a life.

A young couple are married, raise a family and then, one night, she receives a phone call. He is gone. Relatively young and with no warning, he dies. The only man she has ever known has left her with grown children and grandchildren.

Life goes on. Her children are there for her and she has the joy of being a part of her grandchildren's lives in rich and rewarding ways. And then one night she meets someone new and they discover they can talk for hours.

A budding romance begins with all the joy and fun that she could dream of and life is so good for a while. They play and eat and pursue hobbies with every bit of the zest that usually attends those in their prime. Only because they are older and wiser, they know to grab every second and enjoy it to the fullest.

This winter of her life is everything she could dream of and more until nature turns a corner and taking her hand leads her closer to the next bend, a much more permanent one than she has experienced until now.

And I will miss her more than words can ever say, but her life has been rich and full and I would not hold her back to suffer in these last moments more than she must already.

Time and life have a pace of their own and I make no bones about the fact that I do not understand it, but I want so much to simply accept it.