Once again thinking of what, for me, will never be again. I cannot predict when each will pass, or if I will know it at the time, but I know many that have. Sometimes I knew, but seldom. Some I suspect.
Tomorrow I will not sing in front of an audience, nor ever again. I discovered very late in life that this was my greatest joy, yet losing it does not end me. I will never again sing well under any circumstances, and have reason to question whether I ever could, but the illusion that I could, now gone, had been enough to be sustaining for most of my life. Even this loss does not end me.
It seems I end by measures, not wholly at once. By measures I become less, life becomes less. When the last measure of me ends, I will no longer be capable of recognizing that it is happening. Is this some kind of mercy?
There are also the things that might have been, but never will be. And many minor thing begun that will never be complete. These I know better.
Not all are sorrowful, but many are. I seldom take any time to appreciate the worst of what has not happened. Maybe read that last one again. It's tricky.
That time when there are more yesterdays than tomorrows, we can never be sure when it will come, but I am sure that mine did many years ago.
It isn't reasonable to be sad about dying, but I am. I must die, we must all die, for what a horror this world would be if we did not. I wish that the years of decay were not as painful as they are. Maybe that is a way to make us more ready, or at least more oblivious, at the end.
I should take care to not falsely assign purpose to these things.
There is no life of the mind. The brain and the body are one, and they suffer and die together.
Why did I live just to end up with these same sorrows, these same pitiful and pointless thoughts, as have been held by most who have lived?
I hold steadfast to the notion that, to the extent that there are rights, I have the right to feel sorry for myself, and any guilt or shame I feel over this is without need or purpose.