In my reply to a comment a few days ago I referred to a man I’d done some carpentry work for, maybe 25 years ago. He’d just retired, so was in his late sixties at the time.
Jos lives across the road from my daughter and when I go there I often turn around in his driveway. About a year ago when I pulled in, there he was on his riding mower —by then he was in his early nineties. He got off, came over to my truck and we chatted. Jos has always been an upbeat man with a gentle demeanor and practical outlook. In the conversation his physical condition came up, which was excellent for a man his age; but as we talked further he suggested this thing called life might be getting a little old.
I asked, “You’re not telling me you’re ready to check out, are you Jos?”
He just grinned from ear to ear and said, “Anytime, Jim. Any time.”
Then I came across this poem by Dante Gabriel Rosetti.
Autumn SongKnow’st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the heart feels a languid grief
Laid on it for a covering,
And how sleep seems a goodly thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?And how the swift beat of the brain
Falters because it is in vain,
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf
Knowest thou not? and how the chief
Of joys seems–not to suffer pain?Know’st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the soul feels like a dried sheaf
Bound up at length for harvesting,
And how death seems a comely thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf..