Some nights like tonight, when things are quiet, and the music is just right, I can feel my end approaching. I know it will be tomorrow when my world will be changed forever, and everything I know will be taken away. Strangers will be my family, and if I have any mind left, I will live in a world where none can enter.
A world of memories returning. Thinking thoughts I haven’t thought in decades. Old friends and family members I have all but forgotten will become my closest companions. If my body is wasting away in a corner, or perhaps a bed, waiting for me end, my memories will help comfort me.
If I am very lucky, I will go to bed one night, lay down, turn out the light, think about those most important to me and how much they mean to me, how perfect the world is, and go to sleep. Never to waken again. Someone will find what is left of me, and go through the motions that we go through at times such as those, but my race will have been run.
I can not be sad about it, I have spent my life knowing death waits with me, marking time behind me, over my left shoulder. I am grateful for this knowledge. Death has been my councilor and guide for many years, and there is nothing to fear in death for me. Whenever I question what I should be doing, all I have to do is look over my shoulder, and I see that little swish, the flash of what is visible changing into what is not.
I make my best decisions at that moment. Decisions are easy to make in that instant, because everything I have done up until that moment is weighed, and my path is laid out before me. I can move forward confident that the path I take is the correct path. Consulting death brings me calm, knowing what is important and what is not.
Life is what is important. Making decisions that benefit others without impairing or causing harm to myself is important. My life is my most important possession. Something I do not own, and have so little control over is the most important thing in the world to me. Without my life, I can not do those things I must do. I am not even a spec of dust in a sunbeam.
So when the music, darkness, and my thoughts are aligned, I can feel death behind me, marking time. I know my time is not this instant. I also know that I can not waste what little time I have. Time is too precious, and there is too much to do.
When you look at me, and it looks like I am doing nothing, wasting my time, remember that wasting time is not something I do. I may be resting, or collecting my thoughts. I may even be consulting my final end, to determine how whatever weighs me down at the moment ranks in importance to my final end.
Even if I am lounging about, taking naps between sips of now cold tea, know that I have received my guidance from an honest source. Even now as I type this and listen to the music dancing through the air, I know this is exactly what I should be doing. I also know that when I am done with this task my most important tasks of today are almost done.
The dishes did not get washed, the grass and weeds did not get cut, and dinner did not get cooked. But none of that is important when weighed against those things I did that really matter. If tomorrow I do not wake, I will have passed over knowing that I took care of those most important things in my life with all the thought and care and attention to detail that I was capable of. If I do wake up in the morning, it will be a wonderful day, because I will already know those things which are most important and which things do not matter.
Stepping away from myself, these are the things I wish for you too. It is my desire that you too finish each day knowing that if you do not wake in the morning you have completed those things which mattered the most in your life. If you do wake in the morning, I pray you know what matters most, and what is idle distraction at best. Unfortunately, and it makes me sad to write it, but your time too is short. Make the most of each minute, and when it looks like you are wasting time doing nothing, you and I will know the truth of your actions, and how well your time is spent doing what is most important in your life at that exact moment.
