Very, very old

These days sometimes I feel very, very old.

I feel like someone who has been through the wringer of life. Life kept expanding and moving forward, then it began to shrink down, until one day it was rushing down to a single point. A point impossibly small to get through. A point that all my insides would fight against going through. It shrinks to that moment when Dad stopped trying take Robin's pulse. I didn't want to stop trying to find it. I kept feeling something there. I wasn't sure if it was echoes of a spasming heart, or the echo of pulse in my own fingertips. Not really ever being that close to death I still knew that it was over for Robin by the way her body had transformed. Even the stillness she had attained the last few days was nothing like the lack of tone which then pervaded her body, devoid of life. The animal instinct in me knew she was gone even though the thinking brain didn't want to give up hope.

Everything didn't come to a screeching halt. From that point forward time didn't standstill no matter how much I resisted it's marching on.

The lessons I've learned I couldn't have learned any other way. These days I don't know that I changed so much, as much as my inner qualities were brought to the surface. Like the farmer's field upturned in Spring the fertile soil exposed to the surface, finally free of the crust formed during its fallow years. The soil rejuvenated, exposed to the elements, ripe for seeding. Understanding and accepting the cycle of all things.

Sometimes I feel very, very old because of the new depth of my patience with myself and with others. Sometimes I feel old because I seem to have wisdom beyond my years. Sometimes I feel old because of the love and acceptance that is deeper than ever.

I still consider myself to have a youthful body and youthful outlook. My life is full of duality these days and one of the strongest I feel is the competing sense of having the wisdom of someone who is very old, combined with the feeling of still being so young. I really enjoy, and feel quite comfortable with the contrast of these feelings.