Someday

–Image copyright Rocky Schenck

Right now, right this moment, you’d like nothing better than to sit staring at the splendid moon floating in a shallow cloud-saucer of skim milk right outside your window. There’s a nice breeze, and surely memories are moving on it. Pleasant memories, I’ve no doubt, if you could manage to sit still long enough to investigate them.

You don’t have time to sit still, but you should find the time. Because you should know this: it’s creeping up on you. One day in the hardly distant future you’ll go to sleep or you’ll fall down and you’ll never get up.

If you’re lucky, you’ll end up aboard a slow boat going up some fog-swept river in light that looks like late autumn dawn. It’s just that there won’t be any sun rising, no moon, no planet beneath your boat, no bottom to the river.

You’ll get used to it. Trust me: You’ll be in a better place. Your days in front of the television will be over, but you won’t even notice that. So many of the things you think you’d miss you won’t even remember.

I have it on good authority, though, that you’ll still remember plenty of good things; it’s just that for the most part they won’t be anything full-blown or fleshed out.

You’ll get little touches and taps from that old place you once inhabited with so much desperation, joy, confusion, or whatever; the feel of someone’s hand touching the small of your back or brushing the hair from your forehead; a finger tracing your closed eyelids or your lips; your legs tangled up with those of another; a whisper at your ear, the bark of an almost recognizable laugh, and the sensation of your nose right up against the back of a sleeping dog’s ear.

Once a year, on a fine day in the spring, you’ll see clearly something or someone precious, and you’ll be allowed to shed real tears for the life you left behind. It’s a sort of holiday in that place, and most people learn to look forward to it.

The rest of the time, I’m pretty sure, you’ll feel perfectly contented.