Listen to Jim’s podcast:
http://redclaydiary.com/
or read his story below:
GOODBYE, I MUST BE ARRIVING; HELLO, I MUST BE GOING
Here am I, heading southwest toward Taylorville, and I do not know whether I am coming or going.
Well, actually, I do know whether I am coming or going. It is just something I say to get the story jump-started. I am both coming and going. All the time.
While I write this, it is Saturday night, but by the time you read it, it will be Sunday at the earliest, and I will be on the road to Tuscaloosa.
I am leaving the comfort of my Southside home in order to pay respects to the life of Doreen, my late mother’s best friend and next-door neighbor. Doreen died the other day, and I am joining my sister, Barbara, in visiting Doreen’s son and daughter-in-law, Gregg and Lyric.
Leaving B’ham and arriving in T’town. Going and coming.
My Mother, Frances, loved nothing better than to chat over the back fence with Doreen. Together, they conducted one continuous, overlapping, neverending, stay-tuned-for-tomorrow’s-episode conversation that lasted for years.
And, who knows? They may still be at it right now.
At the services, I hope to meet people who knew Doreen better than I ever could. I hope to visit with Barbara, various nephews and nieces-in-law, and offspring galore.
I will not know exactly what to say, will not know exactly the right thing to say, but I have now lived long enough to know that there is no right thing to say. I just hope that being there a little while will mean something to those present. I know that seeing these longtime-interconnected people will definitely mean something to me.
And so it goes. Much of my life is spent paying it forward or making amends. The present does not have much heft, since it is either immediately in the past or immediately about to happen.
We birth, we stumble about, we have a few laughs, a few cries, we love, we puzzle over it all, we come, we go, maybe to come again. Who knows?
I do not know whether arriving is more important than leaving, I just know both are part of some mysterious process.
I do know that letting life gently flow over me is a lot more satisfying than cursing the darkness or resisting the light
© 2016 A.D. by Jim Reed
http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast