To Every Season

I have been thinking about death alot lately. I have no desire to be dead, but still the thoughts have filled my mind.

It must be that spring is here. A rebirth can not happen unless it follows a death. The trees shed thier leaves in the fall and stand stoicly as if they are dead until spring, when they blossom into vigourous life. Daffodils all but disappear from the face of the earth in late summer to miraculously reappear in late winter to herald the coming of spring. The phoenix of the botonical world.

I sat today on my deck. A cool breeze was flowing through the high boughs of a tulip polar tree in my yard. I watched it gently sway in the gentle gusts and wondered about the spring that it first broke through the crusty soil. Year after year, it has perceviered. Through tornados and blizzards and minor earthquakes it has continued it's life with patience and grace. I just watched it.

My thought slipped away from me and returned with a memory long filed away. When I was a Sophomore in high school, I happened to meet a boy named jason Christensen. He was from a Mormon family that had just returned from a mission to Brazil. He sat next to me in Spanish class where he constantly mixed his Portugese with his Spanish. When they arrived in Brazil he had been a small boy and had become fluent in the native tongue. He played futbol with the subjects of thier mission and attended the local public school. He was a happy kid who loved the time he was spending in his adoptive home... until he got sick. About the age of 11, Jason was diagnosed with MS (I think). He never really ever told me, and I never asked. As his condition worsened, his family had to abandon thier mission and return home for better medical treatment for Jason. By the time I met him, the disease had already taken a hefty toll. He had to walk with a walker, his voice was crackly and often uncontrollable and he had little or no fine motor skills. Still, be persisted. Just like my old tulip poplar, he carried on. He was at school every day. He made his way through the halls and changed classes like every one else. He did the same work and he made the same grades as normal students. And though he became more bitter as his condition got worse, which you would expect from a 15 year old trapped in a failing body that soon took to collapsing during the class transitions, never once did I hear him complain. At the time I admired his grit, but in retrospect I recognize his heroism and courage. Sadly, Jason lost his battle a few years ago. His middle name was Pugmire.

The smooth flow of a cool breeze blows through the boughs of the trees and makes the high branches sway. My tuilp polar dances in the wind. It is as it has always been, a great cycle of birth and death. Both find us all, let us hope they are greatly separated and that happiness fills the divide.