LIFE ENTERS AND EXITS

There are cliches worth retaining, and there are those worth discarding!

How did they merit being called the despised CLICHE?

Of course there was a universal truth encompassed in the few words, so universal that the original meaning got lost.

Here in hot Eilat, we  generally witness the coming and going of lives with equanimity.

My husband and I have been receiving death news quite regularly these past months.I cannot say the news was unexpected, although a few did stun us. Age is a factor over 70 or especially over 80. Health crises can arise in a flash and the light is rapidly extinguished.There is the initial shiver, a selfish one,a friend is lost.There will be no more email excursions, or as in my case, I have lost my last two real correspondents (Post Office mail).

It has felt like a garden losing its flowers.

Goodbye, Patricia, Dan, Jeff, and to those holding on:Lorraine, Kirby, George, and Geoffrey.

There is a strong residue of pain however one believes or doesn't that there is more to follow.

The pain does eventually  yield to sadness----- and evokes the deep underlying fear of one's own demise.

The scurry to recognize matters upended, people perhaps forgotten who would love to hear from you,the need to help those who require it, but are unsure about asking.

I have begun visiting the Dialysis Ward in our one hospital here in Eilat (patients are flown to Tel Aviv when a bigger facility is required) several weeks ago, three times a week.The treatments are administered three times a week, and unless a kidney is available for replacement, for life.

Watching how people are adjusting to their life saving machines is an amazing  view.

We are fragile beings, it appears, but so damn resilient, so able to reconnect with the charm and importance of life

however it presents itself to us.The desire to remain with what we know as well as with what we do not know is of astounding dimension.

Of course, I do not wish to live forever---or even for 120 years (as the Hebrew bible suggests), yet I do not foresee my own death with any measure of serenity!

A complicated issue this death thing---as is a menu in a new restaurant that has been touted.By the way,

I have become an expert in that domain writing for Travel Advisor (started as a lark)about a year ago.I have a few thousand readers already!!

Well, I will be interested in hearing from some, if not all of you about this issue.

My husband and I have big travel plans afoot for the remainder of this year thanks to the generosity of family in New Orleans.

Let's meet again next week!
Miss Rheingold