A Date With Destiny

Each Tuesday and Saturday, I pull up a chair next to my greatest fear, and make polite chit chat with my destiny.

He is big, yet small. Ancient, yet infantile. Wise, yet bewildered. Past, yet present.

His body is failing him, but his mind is still bright enough to comprehend that slow and steady extinction.

He scares me to death.

Once, he made love to his wife, tossed his sons high in the air, mowed his lawn, went to work. He lived.

Is he living now?

It seems less like living and more like dying, which of course it is.

But are these last days any less precious to him, than all those that came before? Does he care that he is less than he was? Or does he simply cherish every second that is left to him?

I wish I could ask him. I wish he could answer me in a way that would make me less terrified of what my final days, weeks, years hold.

But I don't ask him.

I remark upon the weather. I offer to move so he can sit in the shade. I try not to stare at the drool on his chin or the tremor in his hand as he wipes it away. I try not to see the bright intelligence in his eyes, becuase that makes him all the more human to me. I don't want to see him as human. I want to see him as a thing that I will never be.

Instead of saying, "You frighten me." I say, "It's a beautiful day for baseball."

So I sit beside my greatest fear and exchange pleasantries with my destiny.

And I wonder if I will ever stop being afraid.

I would like to pat his spotted, quaking hand and tell him that I'm sorry for him. Sorry that he is at the end of his life's journey. Sorry that his body; that machine that has served him so long and so well, has fallen into disrepair. I would like to tell him about my grandmother, whose body stayed strong while her mind splintered into a million useless pieces.

But my pity would not be welcome, I think. It is something for the hopeless and the damned. I do not think he would like to think of himself as either.

So I offer my greatest fear a peanut. My destiny takes it.

And for the moment, we are friends.