Struggle…The Human Condition (The Years of Death)

When I plant, it dies. Where I weed, it grows. What I fix, it breaks, and people I love die.

I am struggling today. I am tired of people not believing in me or trusting me. I am tired of individuals who only think of their own well-being. I want to see more love; I want to love more. It is hard to see the depths of one’s soul and still find compassion.

When we go to bed our lives, our days, our struggles, and our worries keep us up. When finally sleep comes, we wake. When your child is sick and can’t sleep and cries and won’t be comforted, you feel helpless and hopeless. When you catch your third cold this year or find out your best friend is in the hospital, you feel helpless and hopeless. When your roof leaks and then leaks some more, like mine, you feel helpless and hopeless.

When your grandfather dies suddenly at 96, “he’s passed on;” you feel hopeless. He taught you right from wrong. He showed you compassion, he taught you strength and joy in the small things. My favorite grandfather quotes: “I’ve had 90 good years” and my marriage was “a good thing.” I never heard two people argue so much, but it was a good thing all 65 something years of it.

Both of my grandmothers died, my grandfather, my best friend’s dad, my unborn child, my wife’s aunt and uncle, my wife’s grandmother, my aunt, a beloved mentor, and my sister in-law's father in-law in a year and a half. We all struggled.

My grandmother became sicker and sicker. One night, she asked to watch some old home movies. My wife, my grandfather and I sat around her room, listening to her heavy breathing, and watching the old movies. My father as a boy, his brother, my grandmother’s parents, sister and nephew, then my brother and I. We all played the role of a happy family. The joy in the movies didn’t spread to the room. Eventually, that evening my grandmother’s eyes closed for the last time but her fight was not over. It was almost nine days after that night before she died. Everyday I watched a husk grow thinner and thinner. I watched the only person in the whole world who showed me pure selflessness and love my whole life, suffer. Her lungs slowly filled with water, a slow drowning and her flesh melted and sagged from starvation. A person's body reaches a point and nothing can be done.

We die. You will die. I will die. Those we love will pass into memory, then history, then be forgotten. It is the human condition. From birth to death we struggle.

My heart is heavy today. I want more; more peace, more life, more happiness, and less struggle. I will forever remember those that have gone before me and every day I will see my grandfather’s eyes in my daughter's.