How Can I Not Weep?

Tuesday, May 18, 2004

How Can I Not Weep?

How can I not weep when I think of death? For I have seen my brother lying in his coffin, inglorious and hideous. What, then, do I expect? And, what do I hope for? Only grant me, O Lord, repentance before my end.

I have now lived 52 years and 66 days. Much of what I have done I am not proud of. Actually, the great majority of what I have done is nothing to be proud of. I look around myself and what do I see? I see people racing around like bees around a honeycomb. Faster, faster, get more done! Have more fun! What do I have in common with all of them? One thing only -DEATH-

When I see someone making merry or espousing wild ideas and fantasies, I think to myself, "Has this person seen enough death? Have they touched a lifeless corpse? Have they ever see a human body that is starting to decay?" Death will straighten a person right out, straight away. In its shadow, earthly glory fades away.

These last 52 years and 66 days have flown away. I still think to myself that I am in my early twenties. I will see a childhood friend on TV or in the newspaper and will think to myself, "How very quickly they have aged. They have grown old before their time." Then, I will realize that to many I look this old as well. I strike up conversations with the young. They look at me in a funny manner. Why is this? Then I remember my youth and conversations with the old. Why were the aged even talking to me?
The same must be the reason that the young look at me the way they do. They must be thinking "What does this old man have to say to us?" "Why does he talk to us?"

I woke up late one night. The moonlight was bright. I walked to the bathroom. With horror I recoiled and was thrown back. I saw a vision of my dead father. It had been so many years since I had looked on his form that I had almost forgotten his shape and size.
BUT... One glimpse of his form and all of me recognized him as if he were never gone from this life at all. It was instantly that I recognized him and instantly that I felt the fear of seeing him as if a vision from the "Other World". Instant too, was my realization that what I saw was not my father but was my own reflection due to the moonlight, in the bathroom mirror. As he was so now I am! Where he is now, I shall soon be.

Death is coming to me and it will not be long. If it is true that the older you get the faster time goes by, then, in fact, my death hastens to me. 52 years and 66 days have flown by. In 11 years I will be as old as my father and grandfather were when they died. 11 years ago was just yesterday. It was 1993 and I played with and enjoyed the presence of my children. If that was just yesterday, dare I sleep tonight? Will not death come soon?

Now I, a burdened sinner, approach Thee, my Lord and God. But I dare not raise my eyes to Heaven. I only pray, saying: Give me, O Lord, the sense to weep bitterly over my deeds.