OUR TIME IS SHORT by Ernie Welch

"Et in Arcadia Ego." - Guercino, c. 1620
 

Not all roads lead to the cemetery.  Some folks are lost at sea, others consumed in fires, or they just walk out the door one morning never to be seen again.  Some though have their feet planted definitively on the graveyard path.  As obvious and natural as this journey may seem, it may be veiled with fear, ignorance and secrecy. 
 

I like the specter of death.  By that I mean the classic image of a hooded skeleton with scythe and hourglass shadowing our every move. We all cast a shadow.  Here is one that requires no sunlight.  One need only to establish an intimate love and it will shadow that love.  And like a dress-up doll it comes with a variety of costumes.  For example, it can look like two doctors come with bad news.  "The cancer and fungal infection will run their course soon.  There is no more treatment, we've come to tell him we're sending him home."
 

Now I've never been one smart enough to shirk responsibility.  It was my place to deliver the news.  I told the doctors I would speak to him.  "Time to go home, buddy.  We're done here at the hospital."  When he spiked a fever a few days before he died, his mother wanted him back in.  The script on this was written and rehearsed.  He would die at home.
 

The closing act was a waiting game for his mom and me.  That week OJ's Bronco went rolling by on the screen.  I was going to work, while Hospice sat with him during the day.  I was, and am, so trapped by my job, for reasons different then from now.  I couldn't tell anyone at work my partner was home dying of AIDS.  I had to teach classes and act as if all was fine.  He drew his last breath with his mother at his side.  I was a few feet away marking finals.  Grades were due shortly, they had to be done.

 It will forever be surreal to me that last week.  Marking papers, proctoring finals, night runs to the pharmacy for morphine, catheters and chucks, waiting for the final act to be played out, his father's ten minute visit to kneel and pray and my closing his eyes one last time.