Pondering

Sometimes there's a moment where life stops feeling like a repeating circle of events and I feel the tangible passing of time.

Today was one of those days. This morning, a small selection of choir went to the local veteran's home for their Remembrance day service. The veterans sat in the front rows in their uniforms, many in wheel chairs and hooked up to oxygen, sporting either looks of either deep reverence or dementia-induced confusion. There was one man in the front row who insisted on standing for the last post and the moment of silence, despite that he needed a nurse to support him.

When we weren't up front singing, we stood in the hallway as there were no empty chairs to be found. I looked at the rows of black and white pictures of different military units, mostly WWII era. Pictures of young people who now are sitting in wheel chairs or have passed on of old age, or who never made it home in the first place. Everything suddenly felt very real, like a layer had been removed between me and the events of the past. That these people were personally affected by these events of the past that feel so distant to me.

I had a sudden awareness of the nature of passing time. The realization that these people who were part of and witnessed a huge event in history are getting very advanced in age and in the next few decades they will become a detached piece of history. The realization that someday, I and my peers will be the oldest people in a room. That someday I will have faded into history, to have my world summed up into small black print in a text book for people who are also destined to eventually survive only in small black print. So maybe my original circle theory holds true to this, too.

That's something to ponder.
Hearts,
-J-