Two days this week I woke up and my first thought was about dying. Unfortunately for me, this is an underlying enemy in my everyday life, the idea I will die. As we all know... it's inevitable. I cannot change the outcome. We're born. We live. We die. There are those who believe there is life after death. There are those who believe there is nothing else. When I became old enough to understand the cycle of life thing, the burning question was... why? WHY? Why be born at all if that is the end result? I was never the same.
When I made friends with that nice guardrail last November, it was never so clear that I risk my life daily just waking up. I've had a strange feeling in me that I just haven't been able to calm. I had an absolutely frightening, in my face, introduction to the idea that someday I won't be here. Funny as that sounds~ as if I were just going to jump in my car and you wouldn't see me for a while but I'd be back, oh no! I won't be here. Gone. Forever. Period. Believe me, the idea of death scares me. I'm sure it does everyone, but I am so afraid I haven't done what I'm meant to do in this life (or have I done it already and don't know??) or what I think I really want to do... which is... what.. exactly?
Still.... there is a yearning. And the death theme keeps looming...
Whitney Houston. It's taken me a few days to soak it in. Oh, I've heard all the things the media has said someone else was quoted as saying. She was an angel. She was an addict. She was beautiful. She was a wreck. She had talent. BIG talent. I was mesmerized by her voice. So clear and crisp. She sang with such sweet grace. Yet for all her success, she was an addict. All that beauty, and she looked in the mirror and an addict looked back. And she was an addict for a very long time. I don't know all the details, but she rode a roller coaster ride of drugs and disfunction. Only she had money and fame to do what ever it was she was doing. Money doesn't save you. Fame doesn't save you. And now... dead at 48. Did she accomplish whatever it was she was supposed to do before leaving this life? Is her death just another wake up call for me?
I don't have fame. I don't have money. I'm not an addict. Well at least not a drug addict. (I have other vises that could be considered addictions. But we'll leave that for another post.) I will not do anything that will touch as many humans as the sound of Whitney's voice. So of the few hundred people who did, who do and have yet to know me, will I make much of a difference?
Whitney left behind, not only a child, but a legacy of music. My own ride from cradle to grave.. just what will my defining legacy be? Of course my bloodline will continue as I have kids and grankids, but is there something more? I can't stop my death, I can't even prolong it. My last breath will be just that. The last. I find myself on the razors edge. On the verge, as something keeps pulling at me from all sides. Is it just life trying to get out?
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