Friday, April 2, 2010

GOODBYE

My tale has come full circle. From the kid perpetually in trouble to Frog to Private Gill to the California hipster to husband to Dad to the homesteader to the fallen one to the lawyer to the granddad. My dying time will come, like my Dad and his Dad before him. Sarah, Jeff, Sam, and Oliver will live on, blessing the world with their presence.

Looking back and taking stock, this life I've lived is certainly not the one I would have chosen. When viewed in hindsight, life seems to overtake us, like something that happens to us, rather than something we do. If I could go back and tell Frog not to drink that piss, or that impetuous homesteader to steady that damn ladder, or that husband to stop being distant and unavailable, I'm not so sure I would. I figure I'll take the life I've known rather than one unknown.

Despite all my flaws, stupidities, failures and surceases, I've come out alright. This one feels right and ordained, quadriplegia, divorce, and all. It's as if someone decreed, "Alright, Raymond Gill, this is what you get. Good luck."

I have been a spectator of and participant in this wonderfully absorbing, vast cosmic drama. From the Big bang fourteen billion years ago to the uncoupling of the four forces to this fabulous universe expanding at the speed of light to the mammoth supernova exploding in our stellar neighborhood that seeded our solar system with heavy elements that grew together four billion years ago to create our sun and eventually our Earth.

From the molten fireball that was our early planet to a temperature to sustain life to plus three billion years of bacteria to dinosaurs to Cromagnon man and Neanderthals to civilization to Jesus to Buddha to Allah to the Great Spirit to Egypt to Greece to Rome to England to these United States to Ohio to your truly tapping away on my keyboard to share some of my story with you.

What more can one ask?

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