Got Time?

It is cold out. We got to go out for a bit today when the keeper got back from Kay's funeral. She said she needed to work in the yard in order to think. We hoped she would think for a long time. She did until she got too cold. But we watched her seal off the faucets and move in the hoses and the potting bench and the watering cans and the buckets and other paraphernalia into the storage shed. It's full now. We also brought the garden angel into the garage to keep him warm. We think he needs a little snow suit or something. She said she needed to think about Kay and what a heroic person she was. Such courage as a mother and a woman in the church. The funeral was subdued. Kay was a self-described private person, but the variety of the assembly was a testimony to her life.

For us, life seems pretty short, and as cats we don't like to miss too much. But humans sometimes think they will go on forever, and they avoid death. The keeper was thinking about how some Native tribes teach their young a death song so that they can learn it and befriend it and not be surprised when they hear it singing their names. She was remarking on all the junk we have in our home, all the books and art, and photos and stuff. Someday, she won't need it, and it will be just piles of things which were meaningful to her but to no one else. She suggested that perhaps we ( no, she) should start stripping it all away now, but she doesn't want to live like a monk. We don't like that idea either. But, truly, no one would want all of this. And certainly no one would want to clean it out. Maybe in the new year we should start giving a little away, out of kindness to those who will remain. Given what we have, it could be a decade long project.

Well, she said that she doesn't have time to think about it now. She has to prepare a talk, a prayer service and a commissioning rite for later this week. And she has to start tonight! She is running out of time. Aren't we all?