Life has a way of going on whether we like it or not. It has been almost a week since my life was thrown into a bottomless pit, and yet the sun comes up every morning. One day it snowed; the next the air conditioner kicked on to cool the house. I cooked a turkey and I burned the roaster beyond ever being useful again. I swept the porch, but not the sidewalk. I bought goose food. I made coffee every morning. Funny how the mundane works to keep us sane.
Covid 19 is still the number one story on the news, both here and abroad. I mask up and go to the grocery only when I need something. I wove a couple rows on my runner, washed the sheets on Jiraiya's bed and stared blankly at the television for several hours. Life goes on. Someday I am sure, life will again have meaning, but not right now.
If the church was open I could go set in the corner and talk this all over with God, but it is not, so I do the next best things. I stand in my front yard early in the morning and watch the sun spread across the eastern sky. I watch the birds shake themselves out of their stupor and rise against the sky in search of a fellow bird much as my soul rises in hope that this new day will be better.
And at night I search for the moon. Sometimes it is full, which fills me with wonder. Sometimes it is a crescent and sometimes it is dark, but always it is there. As I watch it rise on the horizon, I know that some where, some how, I am not alone. I have a little trouble remembering when life was fun and I can not hear the laughter that used to live inside of me, but some how I know it is still there.
My hand reaches for the phone and then stops in mid air. The number is dying in my head even as my hand retracts. That part of my life is over. It is over, but it is not forgotten. It will live every day in my heart and someday, there will be a big harvest moon. It will be a beautiful orange and it will make me smile. And then, as now, the moon will enter a new phase and I will only see the outline of a cresent against a black sky.
And maybe someday, I will smile again.
