Avacados

Avocados:

My wife lost her Dad today.

There are neither words nor phrase for the loss.

I watched her sobbing in agony and could offer no antidote to her poison.

I held her Mother and gave her all of my strength.
I felt it leaving me as I pressed my forehead to her shoulder and absorbed the gut wrenching pain of her emptiness cutting through our bodies like a blade so sharp that it displays no hesitation in taking what it can hack from a soul.

My wife held her father's body and cried the tears of resolution.

A battle has ended and as brief as it were, it was carving away at the hearts of three souls who had made an unspoken vow to see it through to its conclusion. We knew the outcome before we knew that the battle had begun.

Anger! , Sorrow! , Betrayal! , Helplessness, abandonment, fear, ANGUISHHHH!!!!!

I wonder secretly to myself; What's the point? To what end is the constant erosion of comfort and security?

Where does the path of pain lead? Perhaps an answer is as far away as a bullet. Perhaps the pain will make sense then.
Perhaps there will be nothing. Perhaps it's all for nothing. Perhaps the joke is on those foolish enough to allow their longing for an answer to seduce them into believing in the unbelievable, to believe that we deserve an answer.

There's an avocado plant living in a glass on the edge of my kitchen sink.

My wife drove toothpicks in a radius into the seed of our dinner avocado one evening which allowed her to support the seed on the surface of a glass of water.

Days went by and the water went dry, several times.

It appeared that the seed would not sprout due to the less than favorable conditions under which it had been subjected. Surely a new life could not take hold under such circumstances.

One day, weeks later, I noticed that the seed had begun to split at its base and over days and days and days and time after time of running out of water, months later...
A stem emerged from the crack in that seed.
Soon there were leaves on the stem as it seemingly grew at a rate of one to one and one half inches per day.

As I drive along in my trance of emotional numbness I can see my wife's father's face as his life bled away. I can see the avocado as it triumphs over its adversity of neglect and flourishes in spite of the torture.

It occurs to me that there must undoubtedly be something of great value and honor in having the gift of life bestowed upon oneself, for every living thing on this earth clings to life like a leaf clings to its branch until finally, inevitably the wind becomes too much and the leafs' strength to hold on is exhausted, until it flutters to the ground and dies.

There will be another in the spring.
Another leaf will unfurl in its place and bask in the glorious sunlight for a few months.

When I was a child I lived as the leaf lives.
I knew that I would live forever. I basked in the sunlight and lived in each and every moment just as life was intended to be lived.

I don't exactly remember when the innocence was taken. Somewhere in my travels I began to accept my own mortality. Another virgin spoiled. Another spotless conscience tainted.

I will die.
My wife will die.

In the meantime I think that it may be of comfort to adopt the philosophy of the avocado or the leaf.