Hey God, you take requests?

...if so, leave me alone for a bit, would you?

This is officially my worst year ever. Death and mayhem abound internationally and now within our borders, and on a personal level, it's gotten worse. My mother died unexpectedly and suddenly last week. I saw her the day before she died, and the last thing we talked about was making plans to see On The Line.

Thank god that it was quick, and of natural causes, and she didn't suffer overmuch. I'm very glad of that. She was my best buddy, and I fully expected/wanted/believed she'd be around another 30 years. I know you can't look for meanings and explanations, but I'd really like to have one. Is there a plan? I asked a friend once something along those lines. If there are reasons that things happen, or whether life is just a bunch of stuff that happens. I'm thinking that there's *got* to be more to us than our brief time on the planet. We're capable of too much, and the universe is too big for our little wink of existence to not matter. We're tiny in the greater scheme of things - microminiscule, even - but there's got to be some kind of meaning for us being here, doesn't there? Are we just a collection of biochemical reactions that Just. End., or is there something more?

Oy, getting a headache.

I thought about this the other day, and wished that I'd had it on hand to read at the funeral. Probably wouldn't have gotten through it (just looked at it and got teary-eyed, so I doubt I'd have made it a week ago), but I'd have tried.

I'm a whining baby about flying, and I found this in The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. When I fly I read it, and it's comforting.


Then Almitra spoke, saying, We would ask now of Death.
And he said:
You would know the secret of death.
But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?
The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot unveil the mystery of light.
If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life.
For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.
In the depth of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the the beyond;
And like seeds dreaming beneath the snow your heart dreams of spring.
Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.
Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honor.
Is the shepherd not joyful beneath his trembling, that he shall wear the mark of the king?
Yet is he not more mindful of his trembling?
For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?
And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?
Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.
And when you have reached the mountain top, then shall you begin to climb.
And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.