Once I Knew a Young Woman

Once I Knew a Young Woman

Some many years ago I knew a young woman.  We were together for just about ten years and then she became sick and died.  That was … oh about forty years in the past.  I don’t believe I have ever experienced so much pain – grief – ever.  In my mind she will always be twenty-nine years old and now I am old, old, old.

She will be forever young.  Two years ago my father died at the age of ninety-five.  He was so fragile and crippled with age it seemed impossible his heart and lungs still worked.  His legs didn’t work.  He could barely walk across a small room.  Once he was tall, big and strong as an oak.  It hurt when he died, but it was so different.

As I sat with him when he was passing, I thought of that young woman and being forever young.  I realized the only way to be forever young is to die young. The only way to be forever young is to pass before a person can get old, and so everyone who knew that person – well, time stops.  The only memories their friends and loved ones can pull up are the last ones before they passed.  And if the person was truly young at their end of life, that’s how they remain.

Is that fair?  Is that justice?  Is that a good thing?

I find my mind rather mixed on the topic.  But then I am old.  I can’t die young, even if I died tomorrow.  As an older person I can often see what I take to be almost pity in the eyes of young people as they see me struggle, on occasion, to go up or down stairs.  All gray and bald – wrinkled.  They could not possibly know how I find pity in my own soul for them, not knowing that it is possible they will never know a long life.

I just spent the Holidays with a couple of my sons.  Both of them are nearly six inches taller than I am, and a good fifty pounds heavier.  At one time I carried each of them on my shoulders, sometimes for miles.  I looked down at them from twice their height and corrected their occasional misbehavior.  If I pray, and I am not sure I do, I pray that someday they will have the same days I have had.

I survived a war.  I survived numerous financial reversals and being let go from a few jobs (fired).  My main source of transportation is a motorcycle – because it’s cheaper to operate.  Now I am an old man who has no fear of death because I have already cheated it so many, many times.  And that young woman I knew so long ago is still so young, so beautiful and so full of life.

 dalepeterson.us