In the Midst of Life...

There's nothing like a funeral to remind us of our own mortality.  Having attended one this time last week, I've spent the past seven days, not obsessed with the subject, but certainly feeling more aware of my own mortality than usual.  Not in a morbid way, but just contemplating the way our awareness of the fact evolves over time.  I mean, when we're young, we think that we are invincible and immortal - death is something that happens to other people.  Usually old people, elderly relatives and the like and when you are young, old age seems an impossibly long time away.  Sure, like everyone else, I had contemporaries whose lives were tragically cut short - but we rationalised their deaths as simply being 'bad luck'.  They were, after all engaged in dangerous activities at the time, of the sort that we'd never do, my peer group reasoned.  In my couple of years at school, I lost one friend and two acquaintances to road accidents - two were on motorcycles, one in his old man's fast car that he'd borrowed having only just passed his test.  That was the only way young people could come to grief, we told ourselves.  So, it was a sobering experience when I lost a contemporary to cancer when we were both still our twenties.  It felt as if death had shuffled just a little bit closer.  But heck, we all thought, the odds are still in our favour.  But as the years passed, the casualties started to become a steady trickle and the words we kept hearing at funeral services - 'In the midst of life we are in death' - resonated more and more.  

Finally, you reach an age when you have to accept that your time is finite, that death, once just a distant. Largely invisible, presence in your life, is a player in your prospects.  You start to see death more, still not close, but lurking in the background, peering out at you from behind parked cars or from shop doorways, giving you that knowing look, reminding you of its inevitability.  Yet, strangely, this is reassuring, in a way.  At long last it is tangible presence that can't be ignored or swept under the carpet, which, in turn, makes us focus more on the fact that we are still alive.  Still have a life, albeit finite, to live.  You start to ask yourself how best you can use this precious gift of life in the years you have remaining.  You start enjoying the world around you more, knowing that your time in it isn't permanent.  Which, I know, all sounds like it could be pretty depressing and a real downer of a way to head into a bank holiday weekend.  But, luckily, this past week has been mainly bright and sunny, giving me plenty of opportunities to get out and about, enjoy the sunshine, enjoy nature and just generally enjoy things.  Just yesterday, for instance, while driving back home from a country walk through some country lanes, I found myself being raced by a hare.  I know that I was going fairly slowly as I was passing through a village at the time, but he still kept up with me for a while, before he veered off at a junction, running in front of a cyclist, who was so startled he nearly fell off his bike.  God, I loved that hare for doing that!  Anyway, I guess what I'm trying to say is that my brush with mortality has actually been quite uplifting.  

If nothing else, the funeral at least allowed me to reconnect with some of my younger relatives and I now seem to have an ongoing correspondence via text and email with my Number One great niece, (I hasten to add that this epithet doesn't indicate favouritism - I try hard not to have favourites amongst my nieces, nephews, great nieces and great nephew - merely that, like Charlie Chan's Number One son, she is simply the eldest of the great nieces, (her sister is Number two great niece, her cousin Number Three great niece - I obviously love them all equally), and look forward to each of hem, in turn, assisting me with my investigations into bizarre murders).  Despite being reminded of my own mortality, I still don't have any intention (or expectation) of going anywhere for a good many years yet - I'll just try to appreciate my time more, going forward.