Cemetery Rainbow
photo by Vincent, circa 1995 |
 As I walked I came upon a gray funeral home just east of downtown. I stopped in my tracks to observe the facade of this death parlor. It was quite ordinary with a large picture window and a gray curtain that was closed. I just stood there in the rain, handsome as a rake, skinny as a toothpick, and suddenly pondering the meaning of death.
An old gray gentleman appeared standing at the edge of the curtain. He wore an impeccable suit and was obviously an undertaker. I watched him adjust the curtain. There was a bright green lawn between the sidewalk and the window. The undertaker suddenly looked over and caught my eye, just as I was mystified at the prospect of getting old like him, then to die. Our eyes locked together for just a second. He smiled with knowing laughter, somewhat surprised and amused. You see.......he thought it was a bit funny to see a kid out in the rain with his whole life ahead of him, and curious about his funeral parlor. Then he closed the curtain. I just wondered what it’s like to grow old and be so close to it.
All was gray but the green grass of life....... soaked with rain from a gray sky. There is a window. A curtain opens but does not reveal the mystery of the other side. On one side is a teenager, on the other an old man. I knew that he knew the secret of the other side. And he knew that I knew....that he knew. I continued on my way, walking in the rain.
A lot of time has passed since 1967. The older you get the more departed souls you remember. You see death in the street, death by accident, death by disease, by murder, and eventually you realize that life is a fickle fragile thread. It cannot be broken for even a moment. Anyone who thinks they are far from death is sadly mistaken. It’s right around every corner. It always has been.
No matter how lucky we are to be survivors, no matter how far it seems to the curtain, nobody gets out of here alive! We are “bound by design”. We are mortals. Our greatest tragedy is not to die....... but rather to die having never lived, to have never felt the rain in our hair, to have never ridden in the wind, to have never risked everything now-and-then, just to breathe free.... to know the depths and meaning of life itself.
The above item was part of a eulogy I wrote for a friend who died in a motorcycle accident in August, 2000. I was the web site designer for her tattoo shop.
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