Message of Love, Redux

Etymologically, the apocalypse just means revealing something. Maybe it will be something nice?

On our woods run today, Miles was tense. He always is in the woods. You never know what is lurking in the trees, those towering Tolkienesque creakers who on a windy day sound like the sound effect they use for a door in a haunted house. The air carries scents of a multitude of dogs, past and present. Dogs who have trespassed on the kingdom Miles rules and that threaten our very existence. Sometimes a salamander darts by which is terrifying and confusing, and when the horses appear, God only knows if they are actually pestilence, war, famine and death with sneaky riders who say things like "good morning" or "thank you for having your dog on a leash."

Tomorrow being the last day of the year, I keep feeling like I have forgotten to do something. Going through the list:
-new calendar purchased? check
-a couple of scary goals set for 2019? check
-self-review of 2018 bringing new levels of concern about my adequacy as a human being? check

What if 2019 reveals itself to be the best season of Saturday Night Live ever known? I feel like that would directly correlate with End Times.

Lately many of my hospice patients have been younger than I am. Also lately, I keep trying to channel Wendell Berry and find peace in wild things when I worry about the fate of my children but instead I end up waking up, bolt upright in a cold sweat and wondering what I can do to fix everything for everybody including my children, the children at our border and the relative youngsters in hospice.

What if it turns out mindful meditation is the answer but I am too restless to sit still? What if God meets me on the other side and tells me I wasted much too much time worrying but He/She forgives me anyway and it turns out even poodles aren't anxious in heaven so all our runs are off leash?

I bailed on my January marathon but have signed up for one in April. It happens on my Mom's birthday. I will be running it with one of my best friends. Though truth be told he will always be one and one half steps ahead of me. I am not worried though.

Big goals: marathon, piano recital, don't worry so much.

What if I qualify for Boston but don't get in the race because it is so impacted? What if I forget where I am in the middle of my piano recital? I mean I won't forget where I am in terms of my place in space, as I will be very aware that I am sitting on a piano bench at the Morris Graves Museum of Art probably in some kind of fancy dress. But I might forget what comes next in the Beethoven Fugue or the slow movement of Barber, and then what will I do? On Christmas Eve I was playing in church and the veneer faux-ivory top of the A below middle C flew off during Scarlatti and hit me in the nose. True story.

I worry about racism. And misogyny. About government shutdowns, refugees being barred from entry to a safe haven and how on earth any of us will afford healthcare. I worry that people are too mean to each other and miss out on so many beautiful things. I worry that my piano will die and not be a good candidate for resuscitation. I worry that my son won't live through prison, and my daughters will never trust that the world can be a good place to be given that people like Brett Kavanaugh get to act as a life-appointed moral compass for our seriously off-the-rails country. I worry that pushing 50 I may be past all hope of a marathon PR. I am already worried about my next colonoscopy, which is in 5 years.

The weird thing about aging, besides colonoscopies and empty nests, is how the self shrinks but the spirit expands so that the sack I walk around in feels both less significant and more alive than it ever has before. Chrono-astrono-geographically I am but a blip. But what a blip it is/was/might be!

One way or another, the apocalypse is coming. Its a revelatory certainty, with a dash of hope. I am not worried. Tomorrow is the last day and

OH!!! I know what I was forgetting!
Designate a theme song for 2019.

Life may be unkind but I refuse to stay down.
When love walks in the room,
Everybody stand up.