Behind the Puddle

Everything I watch behind the puddle will die. There isn’t a particularly gentle way to write that sentence. The birds. The squirrels. The geese. The trees. The people sitting in these chairs. Me. Everything alive eventually reaches the end of its life.

I spend a lot of time talking about death, so this isn’t an unfamiliar thought for me. But somehow sitting behind the puddle has made mortality feel less like a subject and more like something quietly woven through everything I am watching.

A baby goose hatches. It grows. It becomes almost impossible to distinguish from its parents. A leaf appears in spring. Provides shade all summer. Changes color. Falls. An animal visits for weeks and then one day I realize I haven’t seen it lately. Sometimes it returns. Sometimes I never know what happened. Life is constantly arriving and leaving. We just don’t always notice both.

Humans are understandably uncomfortable with that. We use softer words. Passed. Lost. Gone. We talk about death as though naming it might somehow invite it closer. But death doesn’t need an invitation. Mortality isn’t something that begins when someone receives a diagnosis or becomes old.

It began when we began. That can sound frightening. I don’t think it has to be. Recognizing mortality doesn’t mean spending our lives thinking about dying. Quite the opposite.

For me, it has increasingly become about paying attention to living. Because if time were unlimited, almost everything could wait. The conversation. The visit. The apology. The trip. The question. Sitting outside with someone we love. Listening to a granddaughter tell a story that takes approximately seventeen minutes longer than necessary. Watching a squirrel attempt another ridiculous theft. We could always do it later.

Mortality reminds us that later is real, but it isn’t guaranteed. That doesn’t mean we need to panic and turn every day into an inspirational experience. Please don’t. That sounds exhausting.

Some days are for laundry. Some are for appointments. Some are for watching television and doing absolutely nothing productive. Some are difficult. Some are boring. Some are wonderful. Most are a mixture. An ordinary life is still a life worth being present for.

Maybe that’s what death has taught me more than anything. Not that every moment is precious. Some moments are terrible. Not that everything happens for a reason. I don’t believe we need to assign meaning to every loss.

Not that we should live every day as though it were our last. If today were actually my last day, I certainly wouldn’t spend it worrying about whether the dishwasher was loaded correctly. But most of us aren’t living our last day today. We’re simply living one of a limited number of days. And that distinction matters. I don’t need to make today extraordinary. I might simply need to recognize that it counts.

The person sitting beside me counts. The conversation counts. The view counts. The ridiculous ordinary things that make up a life count.

Mortality also changes how I think about the people I love. There will be a last conversation with everyone I know. A last holiday. A last ordinary afternoon. A last time one of the girls sleeps at Grandma and Grandpa’s. A last evening Brian and I sit together. We almost certainly won’t know which one it is while it is happening.

I don’t say that to make those moments frightening. I think it makes them human. We cannot preserve everything. We cannot prevent every ending. We cannot love anyone enough to make them permanent. But we can be here while they’re here. We can ask questions. Tell stories. Say the thing. Take the picture. Put the phone down sometimes. Forgive what deserves forgiving. Set boundaries where they are needed. Tell people what they mean to us while they can still hear it. And perhaps talk about what matters to us before someone else is forced to guess.

Behind the puddle, October makes mortality visible. Leaves fall. Things become bare. The growing season ends. But I don’t look at the trees and see failure. I see evidence that something lived.

Maybe that’s what I hope for all of us. Not an endless life. We don’t get that. A lived one. A life with ordinary mornings. People who knew us. People we knew. Mistakes. Stories. Laughter. Loss. Love. And enough moments when we were actually present to realize: I was here.

Maybe recognizing that our lives have limits doesn’t diminish them. Maybe it simply reminds us not to wait until the ending to recognize the life that was happening all along.