Acceptance of the Inevitable
I haven’t written much the last week or so. Usually, I put an essay on Medium spread it to my other platforms such as Minds and Patreon and write several entries for Quora as well as a short piece or two for Facebook. True, I have been busy getting some of my garden ready to rest for the winter and planting a few things for a winter garden as well as learning how to use my pellet stove. But writing has not been on the list.
The rain that has been falling has helped get the fires under control, but some are still burning. That worry has been taken off the table though we are still in the fire season despite the rain. One could almost feel a universal sigh of relief when the water started falling from the sky.
This morning I stood on my back porch with my coffee and my dogs taking in the freshness of the air and feeling quite blessed. My upbeat mood is tinged with a sadness, a sadness at a future personal loss and I am confronted with acceptance.
There are some things we must not accept, must not stop fighting even though it appears we will not win. The Nazification of America or any other part of the world should never gain our acceptance. Corruption in all its forms should never be accepted nor should racism or any other form of hate.
There are those things we must accept such as our responsibility toward our fellow humans and the fact that we will age and eventually die like everything else in this Universe.
There are also those things we find it difficult to accept, but in the end we must.
I received a phone call from a friend last night. He was truly in the realm of acceptance despite his news. My friend has been quite ill lately, and I have been worried for his health. We thought that he just had a bad bout with the flu and that he would be better soon. He told me last night that he had gone to the doctor. After some examination and a few tests, the doctor told him he has advanced stage lung cancer. More tests are scheduled to see how far the cancer has gone and how fast it is growing but the doctor said he probably only has a year or two left before it takes his life.
At my age, news like this is not uncommon. I have already grieved the loss of several friends and a score of relatives. It is not something one gets used to, but it demands acceptance because there is no way of changing it, no way of erasing this fact of life.
My friend has accepted his fate and will be living his life to the fullest until he cannot. I applaud him, brave soul that he is. The pros and cons of treatments have been weighed, more of which will be discussed with his doctor when the final test results come in. For him, the quality of the life he has left is his main concern and I’m sure that would be mine, too, if I were in his shoes right now. He is like the fruit on the vine that ripens as it glories in its existence even though the fruit will soon fall to the ground where its seeds will provide the next generation and its flesh will fertilize that generation.
My friend has accepted life and the end of life and is fully ready to live the rest of his days with joy while accepting that too soon, life will be at an end. My job is to support him, support and encourage his joy, love him as I love all my friends and accept that he will soon be gone. I have long accepted my future demise, so it will be less difficult to accept his. But it is always difficult to accept the passing of a beautiful soul like my friend though in the end it must be so.