His hole life
He refused to get carried away
Keeping his emotions in check
A promissory note
Just enough to cover his pallbearers
A noteworthy life, one that is lived wholeheartedly, is not without passion. Life: it’s all in the risk. The point of life is not to arrive safely in your grave. As Helen Keller so aptly declared, “Life is a daring adventure or nothing at all.” A life reserved is a life lost. We must loose our life in order to gain it! In my first short story as an adult (yet to be published) a character is recounted (after his disappearance and murder) as saying “he suspected that God had little interest in us being saved, and is infinitely more interested in us being gloriously well spent.” In the movie Steel Magnolias, the character Shelby says that “I would rather have thirty minutes of wonderful than a lifetime of nothing special.” Her mother is giving her grief as she is newly pregnant and terminal. There is always room for another baby in the world; it’s the adults that make it crowded. In this life, may we all be newly pregnant, for we are all surely terminal. As we are all present in this awkward period between birth and death, may our soul be bared before our body buried.
