Days End
Went to the hills south of town and watched the sun go down yesterday evening. More precisely, I watched as the earth turned leaving the sun right where it always is, in the middle of the solar system. Sort of ruins the poetry of the moment though when you get all technical about sunsets. Still, it helps to understand how things actually work, and it’s still possible to say it was really pretty last night and it did look as though the sun was dropping behind the horizon.
As I watched, I got a call from a friend who was watching the same sunset and wanted to know if I was looking. I was. It was the return of an earlier call, but the timing was good. We talked about what we saw, the colors, the hues, the shapes. One of the clouds looked like a large pterodactyl. It was nice to share the view. On the opposite side of heaven, the moon was up as well, bright in the blue sky. We both saw it. We laughed at the beauty of it all, discussed our business, then hung up while there were still colors all around.
I stayed for the end of the show when the sun is gone, and the clouds turn gray and start to slip away on the high-flying winds. It’s a lot like life. All bright and colorful until the day it’s not. It helps me remember to appreciate beauty when I see it because it’s neither a given nor a constant. One of the low flying clouds even began to look like a specter, ominous and dark ready to fall upon me. I turned away and went home, leaving the ghosts for another day, happy with my vision and the memory of a friend who called.
John W. Wilson is the author of the Long Goodbye: A Caregiver’s Tale