Death by Maggie Barton

I sat across from Death today.
Death looked directly at me as I looked back.
I chose not to run or try to escape.
For as I looked it became a mirror for me.
I saw humanity with its joys and sorrows, pains and hopes.
I saw a life led best it could.
I saw the ambivalence about life’s journey’s end.
Staying, leaving.
That bittersweetness that is life’s fabric.
I asked the question "what is beyond that door?"
Something else?
Nothing else?
When is it my turn?
I don’t know.
At least he knows when I don’t.
What then is there?
Just NOW.
Looking out of the window into the rain.
Passing life along as best we know how.
Can’t run away anymore.
Can’t escape from that inevitable door that approaches all of us, closer and closer, day by day.

Copyright 1999 All rights reserved.

Maggie's Writings Maggie's Place