Alone we are born, and die alone

As for man, his days are as grass:
as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth.
For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone;
and the place thereof shall know it no more.

Psalm 103:15-16

For lent, I am going to write a little every day. Even when I am tired and sick and have more pressing matters to attend to. It struck me today that I have not been as reflective as I once was, and I'd like to change that, even for just a short while.

So today is Ash Wednesday, probably the single-most poetic day of the Christian calendar; the day we are marked with a sign of our own mortality and told to remember we are dust and to dust we shall return. And for a moment, with a fingertip tenderly etching this message onto our skin, death seems less scary.

The past year and half has been a season of goodbyes, of watching old loved ones fade away into whatever comes next, of grasping at the air left behind of those that went without warning, of secret griefs and sorrows. This spring I witnessed the last rattling breath of a man who was able to make peace with his family, who knew that he was dying. This summer I gathered with my the people of my blood around the bed of a woman with one foot already firmly rooted in the other side and we sang her soul the rest of the way. Death isn't pretty. It isn't easy. And yet, in some ways, it was beautiful. Oddly enough, it was death that restored my faith that had been lost with other lost things....it made me believe again. Perhaps it was death that taught me how to relinquish control, to become vulnerable again.

I feel like I've spent most of my life fighting for a place in the world, trying to figure out was I "should" be doing. And the older I get, the less certain it seems. And then, on days like today, a voice comes down from above and says "My sweet little idiot, what will you do with your one wild and precious life?" (remember that Mary Oliver and God tend to speak with the same voice for me) and I remember, with less anxiety than I would think possible on an ordinary day, that I am dust and to dust I will return.