somebody’s old lady thinks so

Reflecting on my first fifty years…

What has been most significant? While still in process about everything, I would start with

• growing up in a loving family
• finding my love, getting to keep him
• receiving my children, letting them go.

***

The most important thing involving my inner life happened when I stopped fearing my death.

For a decade I have not feared dying. This you would know is very significant, if you could only know the grip its terror held on me, before.

I’m not saying I don’t fear anymore the process of dying, the uncertainty about how it will happen, the lack of control. Put me on a cliff with slippery stones underfoot, I’m still going to freeze and wail like a treed kitten.

What I stopped fearing was the end of living. The end of my story here. I used to be terrified of what it would mean

• if I hadn’t gotten the details right
• if I let everyone down
• if (here’s the biggie, I suppose) nobody really noticed.

***

I couldn’t escape the conclusion that 20 years past my demise no one would notice, because that’s what we experience with others who’ve passed on. The world moves forward.

What changed was a new sense of the story that maybe, just maybe, we’re all part of (a.k.a. the meta-narrative). I recognized the possibility, and began to believe, that this existence is not the main event. The one who made possible this living we do is not, anymore, in my mind

• just a construct
• a limited being like me
• a hand-wringer over the way events turn out.

Instead, this one, this other, is

• responsible for everything in reality
• the cause
• the great artist
• the author of the story being played out, of which I am only a small character, albeit a character as significant as any other in terms of being created magnificently by the one.

***

Ten years ago, when my thinking started making its shift, I grasped this thought about myself: Even if I was caused by the creator I believe in to be dark, to reject the one and go against the coming grand narrative conclusion — even if that turns out to be true sometime after I croak — this story is still a good one. The shadows will only enhance the light. There would be exquisite meaning even in my role as one destined for destruction.

I think that’s when I started seeing how much I truly loved the story and its author, and I began to grasp morsels of hope. Because the creator, so it’s been revealed, will not punish or destroy a single one who embraces the story. These beings are drawn to truth, though it slay them.

***

And so for a decade I’ve lived here. Not afraid to die, to be gone. No longer worried about what’s marked on my tombstone. Sorry that people will grieve, but hoping they will not despair. I’m really looking forward to finding out what comes next. I’m believing it’ll be good. Such belief defines “faith” for me.

I’m embracing the next stage of the adventure, the actual symphony or story. This part, though good in its way, has been only a prelude or prologue.

I like it here, most days. I really do. But the main event is coming, and I think I’ll like that, too.