Choices We Make That Only Come Back to Kill Us

And the goddamn timer stopped.

The ground is getting closer. It's coming on so fast. We try to fight it. And that's it. We do nothing. And that's it, too.

Is this a test or warning? Will I wake in the morning to the same-same world? Will I fade away?

And the wheel turns; we're earning merit as a feeble old lady's solitary tear winds discreetly down her cheek. No one smiles or drowns or notices.

Life's lesson number one:
Dukkha

Just look away and don't ask about her Lover. Look away and don't ask who she ever loved in life. Don't ask how it felt to lose them. What is grace, and how the Hell do we get it?

"There are places
Some of us can't face yet
And even though we see it
We just swear God's sleeping
So we say,

'Ash to ash, dust to dust,
We're all gonna die so we have to trust in something.'
But it's probably nothing
There's gotta be something"

It just keeps going until you give up. You'll keep going through it.

Will I miss him? Will I remember? I think I'll relate, and that's the scary part. That's the part that brings it straight into the marrow and picks away like nails on a chalk board. A memory that can pry your eyes wide open. The flowers won't be there. The temple, mosque and church will be miles away, and there will be one giant doorway there into the earth. And I'll see my own vacant eyes staring back at me. I'll see how simple he wanted it, and I'll relate. I'll think of all the things I could--and don't want to--become. And then all the things I could be anyway.

Saturday night I'll be drunk out of my mind. We'll celebrate that next day that marks the accomplishment of not dying over last 365. Then Sunday, I'll go see one who didn't make it. And after Monday, no one will ever see him again. How sick do I feel?

"You say, 'All you ever talk about is dying, and it's getting so old.'"