Nine Years Later...

I just realized this afternoon that I missed the anniversary of my the beginning of my blog. On August 16th I've had a blog for nine years. I knew I was forgetting something, I just couldn't place what it was. This year it was on a Saturday, the Saturday we had a going away party for my one of my younger brothers. He will be moving to Hawaii tomorrow and will live there until Christmas when he will come home for the holiday. He is going there to study at a university and will go back there after Christmas. He's never been away from his family for longer than two weeks at a time, but now he will be away for five months. I'm really proud of him.

Speaking of leaving family, yesterday I and several of my siblings arose early and drove to Kentucky. We first stopped in Bowling Green so my departing brother could say goodbye to our great-aunt. We ended up having an impromptu lunch with my aunt, uncle and cousins as well. Then we made our way over to see the other side of the family about forty-five minutes away. My mom's older brother, my uncle, is dying of cancer. Honestly, I don't know what to think about it. I feel sad. I want to honor his life, but I am so tempted to be critical - to judge the fruit of someone I was related to and interacted on many occasions. He even lived at our house for several months. My father supported him, his horse, and his dog during that time.

Now he is nearly gone. He's only 62 years old, roughly the same age as my father, just a little bit younger than Robin Williams. But he's dying like he lived - comfortably dependent on those who cared more about his well-being than it seemed he did. His parents, who will have been married for sixty-four years in on August 21st, are there managing his affairs. They are both eighty-three years old currently, right at twenty years his senior. I cannot imagine that, but trying to makes me very sad.

It's made me wonder what is the line between living and dying. When does one begin and the other end? Or is it like a loop? Maybe like a tree goes through seasons of living and dying, so too do humans cycle through like reincarnation or something. I don't know.

I feel like Hansel and Gretel in the woods, leaving bread crumbs along the way to hopefully find my way back once I've crossed over into death. Perhaps these notes I'm taking on my life will somehow give me direction when I've cycled back around. Or maybe I'm like Tom Sawyer using a kite string to explore the cave of my own consciousness. I don't know.

Anyway, I've lived too long not to notice the cyclical tendencies of life. All one has to do is peruse my posts over the years to recognize that I basically keep saying the same over and over again just using different words and structures. My tone is pretty consistent though (syntax is the technical term). I started listening to a book on CD yesterday about habits. It's very interesting. I may give a rundown of it when I'm finished. Meanwhile: