Rusty's Armory

In the Shadow of Atropos: Meditations on Aging and Grief

Posted on September 28, 2023

Today I woke late.  But there is no reason to get up early these days, so learning that an occasional morning off isn’t the end of the world.  I don’t know how I You-Tube video today of a guy who goes around restoring forgotten and overgrown grave sites, but there it was, and I watched as he cleared off the overgrown graveyard in some unknown cemetery in Oklahoma.  Apparently, it was a family site as well as a community grave, and it had some eternal funding for cemetery maintenance that disappeared with the last caretakers death around 1940.

There were ornate stones, one of a log tree that had been cut short meaning that the person died in their 20’s.  There were some with lambs on them meaning children who died young or in childbirth. There were husband/wife stones. Some stones were pushed aside and became enclosed in tree trunks, and it would be impossible to read them without cutting the tree apart.

Then the vanity of it all fell like a leaden cloud on me. I had a Solomonic moment. The original Hebrew for this is “הֲבֵ֤ל הֲבָלִים֙ הַֽכֹּ֔ל הָֽֽבֶל” which is transliterated as “hevel havalim, hakol hevel.”

“הֲבֵל” (hevel) means “vanity” or “breath.”

“הַֽכֹּל” (hakol) means “all” or “everything.”

So, “הֲבֵ֤ל הֲבָלִים֙ הַֽכֹּל הָֽֽבֶל” translates to “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity” in English.

I sit here heartbroken and unconsolable as I watch the woman of my youth wither, and not being of any real help to her at this point.  You-Tube videos keep her entertained in the days, and her old routine of watching the evening news feeds takes the evenings.  We have a small moments of lucidity and laughter in the mornings with our coffee, and for brief moments throughout the day.

Soon, the inevitable happens, and Atropos snips our tread free of the fabric of life.  Maybe believers in Messiah give me a little grace as I resort to pagan beliefs as a rhetorical and whimsical device, and not a theology I believe.  But today I am feeling small and overwhelmed, and the old Greek myths sought to explain the unexplainable to a populace that had no hope.

Truthfully, I am not without hope, nor am I in despair.  But for this moment in front of the unblinking cyclops where I pen my thoughts, I submit to sadness.  We will probably be interred in urns, and in a few short years, we will be forgotten just as those graves that bravely but uselessly faced death.  We simply cannot contain the memories lives of all those who have passed, nor should we.

VIVI, NON VIVI, VIXI.

“I was alive.”

“I am not alive”

“I have lived.”

Inscribed on ancient Roman headstones and memorials.  Soon Linda and I will pass into that long good night.  My hope is in a resurrection where I’ll see her once again in her old beauty.  Many of her friends have passed into the long sleep, and none are left who bring her joy.  She walks that final mile alone and uncomforted, and I mutely watch.

My hope is to not pass until she does.  I would spare her the awful grief.  But that is not my choice.  Others will dictate that event, and I can’t prevail against it.

Weep with me if you will, but do not console me, for I am inconsolable.

George Fowler
Thursday, September 28, 2023