How the world ends

Beautiful crocus

I took this picture of emerging crocus flowers on my walk home on Friday after a lovely walk through Cornwall Park. It reminded me that we are now only a few weeks away from the first day of spring, on March 21.

The title of this post has kept coming to me during the past week, as I've watched the invasion and destruction of city after city in Ukraine, as Russia continues what it is calling a justified "military operation" to remove Nazis from power. And all this, while the Ukrainian president is Jewish. How weird is that? But it is not the invasion and the war that I'm talking about, but what it will be like when my own life ends, and the world ends for me.

It is necessary to meditate early, and often, on the art of dying to succeed later in doing it properly just once. —Umberto Eco

 I am quickly reaching the place in my life where everything I have ever wanted to do, see, or experience has come to pass. There is little that I expected from life that has not already been accomplished. I've lived almost eighty years, or even more than that if you consider the time before I was born as part of my lived experience. Married and divorced more than once, but living happily with my life partner today, and having given birth to two beautiful sons who have already left this world behind, I was born into a rather large family with two parents who lived short but very full lives. Numerous friends and family have already come and gone.

I don't come from a lineage that is long-lived. My parents both died from heart disease in their sixties, along with my son Chris, so it's something that I figured would probably be the way I would die, too. But since the advent of statins that help to keep high cholesterol under control, my own health statistics show that I am not in any danger of dying from heart disease. But eventually something will help me over the hump between life and death, because that's what happens to mortal beings. 

The only thing I know for sure is that I won't die prematurely, since the natural lifespan of white females in today's world is around 83. That's an average, with some living longer and many dying sooner, but it's only a few years from now that I will reach that venerable age. Of course, I might actually live to be even older than that, like ninety or so, but I don't think it's very likely. And would I even want to? Would you?

Things wear out. People wear out. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, if you didn't already know this fact, but the older we get, the more likely it is that we will develop an illness and become frail and infirm. For now, I feel incredibly fortunate that I can still stride out the door and walk with purpose into the nearby forest. It's important for me to keep myself going for as long as possible. 

Many of the activities I enjoyed in my youth are not possible for me today, and that's okay. I once bicycled from Boulder to San Francisco in six weeks; I've jumped from airplanes thousands of times, packed countless parachutes, and traveled all over the world. Sometimes I've had to endure long periods of pain in recovering from accidents or illnesses, and I have learned how to do that, too.

The one thing I have not lived through is a war in my country. That looks like it might happen before I die, as the conflict in Ukraine is likely to spill over into other countries, and we might be at the beginning of another world war. It's been heartbreaking to watch the news these past two weeks, imagining myself in the situation of a young mother having to flee to an uncertain future, leaving her husband behind and having bombs falling all around. Simply heartbreaking.

It's not like this is a new event in the world; we have been having conflicts in many parts of the world for many, many years. Mostly I have not been aware of much of the pain and suffering, but in the mid-1990s I attended a conference where I met two women from Bosnia-Herzegovina. They told me of the horrors they faced during the breakup of Yugoslavia and the incredible suffering that took place in that part of the world. I had no idea, and I felt compelled to learn something about the conflict. They went through mass bombings, ethnic cleansing, and more. It was the most devastating conflict in Europe since the end of World War II. Are we now beginning another period like that?

I also learned that one of my favorite actresses from a series I loved, Babylon 5, was born in Yugoslavia and had to leave her country because of the war. She moved to Los Angeles and became Delenn, the Minbari ambassador in the series. Some of you might know Mira Furlan from her role in Lost, but since I never watched that, she will always be Delenn to me. She died last year from "complications from West Nile virus," at the age of 65. She was in the process of writing her memoirs when she died, and her website contains many writings that I've enjoyed. Check it out here, if you're interested. Her last tweet is also included there, and I must share that with you:

I look at the stars. It's a clear night and the Milky Way seems so near. That's where I'll be going soon. "We're all star stuff." I suddenly remember Delenn's line from Joe's script. Not a bad prospect. I am not afraid. —Mira Furlan

Although I have no idea how much time I have left in the world, I hope I will remember that we are all star stuff when I'm taking my last breath. It could be years from now, or today, but whenever it turns out to be, I will have had a wonderful and very full life, with many people I've loved and who have loved me back. 

I hope you will find your own true path and will follow it as you make your way through the coming week. Until we meet again next week, I wish you all good things.