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May 05, 2006 - Friday, 5:16 p.m.

Everything has gotten so far behind at the house. I don�t think I have any clean clothes and we are almost out of towels. There is so much to do around there and it is starting to feel out of control. I have weeks of mail to go through. I need to pay bills too!! Gah!! The list goes on and on. Once I get everything handed in on Monday I need to start addressing my house and yard.

The meaning of life has been rolling around in my head. Just the thought, which is being re-emphasized over and over again, that we all are going to grow old (hopefully) and die. Thinking the thought that we really don�t know what is down the path ahead of us. One seemingly arbitrary decision can affect our entire life. I keep thinking about Ro�s son � 22 years old. They had life jackets, but they left them back at the apartment. They were fishing from the canoe. Eli stood up, the boat rocked and he fell out. Dan went to help him back into the boat, and Eli waved him off, but Dan leaned over to grab him anyway and into the water he went as well. I guess there was another guy fishing in a boat near them and he was able to pull Dan out, but Eli was below the surface and they couldn�t reach him. An array of decisions, that lead to that place, not bad decisions or good decisions, just decisions.

And then there is Steve. Life is just going along., work is good, the marriage is bad. The wife tries to use divorce papers to make him do something, but instead he signs them. As he begins to untangle himself from a bad marriage he finds out he has brain cancer. He was only 1 year older then I am now. Four years he fought the inevitable. Bottom line is that all paths lead there, no matter what decisions you make you eventually end up at that event.

Is it just getting older that makes a person contemplate death? Is it that we start to realize we are closer to that event then we are to our birth? Perhaps it�s that we have begun to lose the generations ahead of us. We begin to have to face the reality of losing our parents. I�m not sure what it is, but I find is drifting through my mind often. When I find that my path is headed there (closely) how will I respond? We only have such a sort time to be alive. We have so many things we really need to accomplish and most of them are in the realm of self-realization and development. We spend a small portion of our life where we aren�t responsible for other people or perhaps it�s just that we don�t realize it. We start to realize we�ll have some responsibility for our parents one day and then we have kids. After that point, even after they�ve grown up we still think and worry about them. We hope we�ve done a good job raising them and that they have happy and productive lives. Then there are grandchildren and perhaps even great-grandchildren and along the way we gain in-laws and sons and daughter in the addition of spouses for our children. For the rest of our life they are in our hearts and mind.

Oh� ENOUGH pondering for one day�.

Later�. M