I don't want to die under a lay-in-tile grid ceiling

The children are so beautiful I am made to question my own worth in the deserving of them. It is a humbling fact of parenthood, being faced with the transient beauty of childhood. Jane says they are so beautiful it sometimes makes her feel a bit sick. I know what she means, all parents surely experience powerful moments like this.

If I didn’t have them I surely would not be about to take myself to bed, I would be drunk for a lark and ready to sing. How much of my life has been spent like this? It’s like hitting a top note and hanging on until your breath is all but done, but why and what for, only to worry about death and bad fortune as your bladder weakens?

Let me go, I say, let me go soon enough and thank my lucky stars for it. There will be no home for the bewildered for me, Jane will see to it. I have tasked her to let me go when the time is right, although I am told I have to remain a few years for the sake of the children. This is not morbidity but realism. Morbid is pumping poison into your face to appear less old – the sheer fear of ageing begetting denial and falsehood.

I will do as I’m told but death will rescue me from my own stricture. I will not cry as its wings envelop me but I do not want to die under a lay-in-tile grid ceiling, like my father, or in a basement like my mother. How did it come to that, those poised and fashionble frames, smiling into the dry dead lens?

God bless those who give their lives for a cause, whether or not they believe in this way. Strife, and the having of causes, is a step towards salvation. It is a curious twist in which the resolution of strife removes an objection which gives rise to the cause which helps people who take it up feel moved, and vital. Without strife, there is no feeling, derived from the cause, raised by the objection.

But hey, it's Christmas time. 'Are you ready?' people ask, but what do they mean by 'ready'? Ready to stuff myself and do a little bloated dance. I don't know but I'm in there, buying stuff like it's the last we'll ever see of it. Just focus on the children, I tell myself, focus on the children. And it's true, my heart skips a beat in the light of their smiles, whether or not I deserve them.

Christ is Dead

It’s almost Christmas and although I wasn’t brought up to believe in god, I’m glad there are people who do. Faith is a warm and comfortable place which is particularly attractive at this time of year.

Today we learned that the journalist Christopher Hitchens died, which was a bit of a shock strangely enough. I heard him interviewed once and liked him immediately, fell irrationally out of love with him when I discovered he wrote a column for the Daily Mail and then admired his atheism which was as passionate as any religious belief. Taking a firm stance on just about anything has potentential for trouble and he picked a real doosey. God bless you Mr Hitchens, even if he doesn’t exist.

It snowed a little this morning and from my vantage point at the computer I can see buds with little white caps on. As I pause to think about this man that I never met, his intellect and his passion now dissolved, back in the ether, a ray of sun bursts out from under a heavy brow of clouds behind me and the buds jiggle up and down in the yellow light. It’s alright, I tell myself, we come, we go and whether we amount to much is just a matter of opinion.