Bigger and Bigger

Over the past year I have spent a few hours thinking about the meaning of life. There is nothing like a shove towards the edge to make a person sit down and consider the why question. When things are going well we all tend to beam and say a small thank you before heading out the door to the next activity that will bring us pleasure. There is nothing wrong with that. It is, I think, part of being human. We can not spend all day, every day, considering our mortality and our place in the cosmos. We have to focus on what lies around us rather than star gaze, or naval gaze for that matter.

But when things go wrong the questions I thought I had answered years ago came back in capital letters attached to a permanent supply of neon lighting. They blinked at me during the nights and I could hear their annoying sizzling sounds during the day. No matter how generous people are with their time and love when you are going through a bad patch in life you end up spending a lot of time on your own. You can distract yourself with books, music, newspapers, the internet, radio and tv but eventually you find yourself in the kitchen with a mug in your hand staring out the window and wondering how the world will manage without you.

Who will load the dishwasher the correct way? Who will remember to buy the piggies food and make sure they get hay every day? Who will water the garden and weed the flower bed? Will there be someone who dead heads the flowers so that they continue to bloom? Will they miss your sill jokes and long winded stories? Who will replace the flowers in the vase?

Of course the answer is simple: someone else. There will always be someone else to do those things. There will also be some one else that holds your loved ones in their hours of need. There will be kind words and kind acts from other people. Eventually your image will become slightly faded and your voice not easy to recall. The pillows on which you laid your head will no longer have your scent on them. Your favourite chair will become one sat in without a thought of you. You will have become the relative who moved to another country and did not keep in touch.

Which is as it should be. It is just the enormity of the fact that we can be here and then be gone yet the world continues that frightens. How is it possible that we can be so important in the lives of others and then become a part of their memories as they move on with their lives? Of course it has to be possible or the species would not have survived.

I have stared in the mirror and seen a bald woman. I have seen a woman's face crumpled with tears and white with fear. I have heard her cries and felt her sadness. I have watched hair grow back and accepted that for some that was the sign that they need no longer bother about standing by her side. I have heard words that have buoyed and words that have destroyed. I have been held and have held. And at the end of the day when the night is at its darkest I have known that the day that has been must be cherished as a memory and the one ahead treated as a gift. Nothing else makes sense.

We all go through life hoping that it will not end for us. We gamble, win and sometimes lose; we moan and groan; we forget to shelter those we should and offer strength even when it is not asked for; words are left unspoken; kindnesses not given because of a lack of time; phone calls not made to ask how others are because we do not think of them needing our friendship.

My father used to say that we enter the world alone and we leave it alone. True but we should all make an effort to ensure that as we walk, run, crawl, leap and dance through the world we acknowledge and care for those with whom we find ourselves traveling because at the end of our days we all need to know that we have been part of something bigger than ourselves. If we shut the door and only peer through the window at those passing we miss out on the many opportunities to celebrate all that it means to be alive - if only for the moment that we have.