While I was sitting out the back having my morning serve of tea & toast, I was flipping through a magazine and looked at one of their short stories; it turned out to be about a brother and sister who didn't get on in younger years but came to love and respect each other as they grew up. The story ends with the brother proudly being part of the wedding of his younger sister.
After I finished reading, I closed the magazine and sat there lost in my thoughts for a while. What were the odds, I pondered. Just this morning, Facebook had reminded me that it was seven years to the day I had been best man at the wedding of my younger sister. I'll never forget how happy she looked that day.
We miss you, Julie. God bless.
*
Even last Sunday was busy this week. I read from the Old Testament at the communion service this morning (and got the usual two or three comments from the parishioners - maybe I should start selling my autograph for the missionary fund).
Then picked up three bags of feed from the Animal Tucker Box store. Home for a light lunch and closed my eyes for an hour. Went next door to a birthday party for my neighbor's big-seven-oh celebration. The family dogs didn't seem upset by all the visitors, though one of them brought her ball in and kept dropping it at stranger's feet and looking hopefully at them.
*
Here's a poem I wrote back in 2014:
A MONDAY POEM
Somehow
at this time of life
the day seems to go out of focus
so easily.
Too much coffee
or maybe too little.
You feel as though
in some way
you haven't quite connected
with reality.
It's all -- somewhere a little removed.
You run on tramlines of routine,
vaguely baffled by your own steadfastness.
The things you used to love
no longer give you the same pleasure.
The things which were a chore
are so familiar
they no longer
even bore you.
Voices on the radio
talk of interesting things
and play new pieces of music
but it seems to come
from a space station
in orbit
around some other planet.
The calendars and diaries
tell of an old year ending
and a new year beginning,
but there are none
of the markers you were used to.
Where are the cards
from those uncles and aunts,
so punctual every year?
All gone, every one of them.
And you realize that now
you are the older generation.
