Nothing Lasts Forever

 

April 12, 2014  

I miss the dog – her soft snoring as she slept beside my desk when I worked at the computer, the twitchy “running” dreams of her last days when her legs no longer followed her commands while awake, even the slobbering kisses as I buried my face in her neck or scratched behind her ears, knowing it was her way of saying, I love you, too.

I am relieved she’s no longer in pain from weary joints and wasted muscles. I don’t know that her consciousness survives death any more than I know that mine will, but it does comfort me to think that she has “crossed over the rainbow bridge” and now runs freely, again.

And with that comfort, I’ve put her things away, tucked her safely to sleep in my memory and turned my mind and affections back to Little, the cat, to the arrival of spring (which is quite lovely right now) and to all the chores it portends around the house and garden.

The cat relishes the extra attention, the yard needs it and the garden, of course, won’t survive and thrive without it.

The ornamental pear trees are blooming up and down the street, as are the red buds. The dogwood can’t be far behind.  The cardinals have begun
singing again after their winter silence, while the little black birds have returned to bob for grass seeds across the lawn.

My maples have budded and begun to leaf; the daffodils have come and gone; green grass has begun to cover the leaves and trash that collected in the corners of the yard through the winter. Time to rake the leaves and bag the trash.

The early vegetables, especially the peas, have begun to make their way through the straw covering their garden plot. Yesterday I planted some potatoes and onions and finished potting the seeds for tomatoes, peppers, squash, cucumbers, melons and okra to transplant in May.

Tomorrow and Monday, we’ll have some rain – followed by a cooler day or two – a good time to finish spring cleaning around the house.

If I’m lucky, the rest of next week can be spent catching up around the yard.

We live in a world without guarantees. I am at an age where tomorrow isn’t a sure bet (though I suppose it never is, for any of us). The economy could go through another collapse any time, now. Energy supplies are ever more expensive as we move past peak oil and supplies dwindle. Climate change continues to work its ravages around the world. The Great Powers play their dangerous games in an attempt to continue business as usual just a little longer.

We  can do little to avert the disasters that are ahead of us other than to prepare as best we can. Just as we could do little to avert those we’ve already passed through.

There are about a million “preppers” here in the US; no one knows how many, worldwide. Prepping for disaster is always a good idea – we humans seem to bring them upon ourselves with alarming regularity. But prepping is not a guarantee of survival any more than complexity is a guarantee of progress.

Spring is just nature’s way of telling us that we need to stop and smell the roses along the way.

It’s a time to clean up the mess left by winter, plant our seeds, work with our neighbors and live our lives with every ounce of joy we can wring out of them.

Nothing lasts forever.  Nothing should last forever.  We shake our fists at the universe and yell, “It can’t be so.”  The universe sends us spring to remind us that it is.