Just Sad

I sit and listen to the cicadas and feel comforted by their lullaby and watch a black squirrel navigate the thin branch before it leaps from one tree to another in the morning light.

As I sit on my deck overlooking my backyard and the wooded trail behind me I keep coming back to the immutable facts of my sadness.

The “us” that we became more than four decades ago will become two I’s on separate paths that travel through unmapped regions charted only by myths and legends.

The legacy we hoped to leave won’t grow in size, shape or impact. The legacy we hoped to leave will only grow dimmer in the eyes of our beloved, our loved ones.

In the seven decades of my time I have sat on the hard pews of many temples, churches and cathedrals, listened to the eulogies of those that bore me, that carried me in their arms and kissed my brow, Those that fed me and who’s knee’s I’ve learned at and Those I have admired and sought to be like and there are few still standing who know me as they did and loved me in their way.

In the not to distant future one of us will join them and I will either be the picture on an easel or be standing at the podium.

My morning coffee has grown cold while I have wrestled with these thoughts, a rabbit has joined the menagerie and feasts on the clover and grass in my backyard. It is late summer and the maple tree is filed with seeds wrapped in wings that will magically sail through the air and find their way to the ground and Mother Nature in her wisdom will help seeds to become seedlings and will keep them warm beneath the snow and bath them in the spring rain and new growth will replace old and all will continue.

The cicadas keep me company as I watch a leaf fall on the new mown grass. August has always been a bittersweet month, dog days of summer, time to get ready for the new school year while planning to squeeze the most one can out of the freedom of the summertime.

This August feels like sand slipping through my fingers. The tighter I grasp the faster the sand slips away.