Such Times

After spending the weekend with my father, sorting the accumulated ephemera of my grandparents' lives,  stacks of saved birthday cards, their 1935 high school diplomas, the marriage license, my father's birth, grandkids, retirement, my grandmother's death 20 years earlier, I was reminded that we should remain in the moment. 

And to remind myself (and you), I offer this meditation from the late, gay author Christopher Coe:

There will always be one final everything; the last word, of course, the last breath; there will be one last check you write, one last nap, one last artichoke.

There will be a last time you chop scallions, a last movie you will see, a last time you fly to Rome.  It doesn't matter how many coins you leave in the fountain.

You will make one last photograph, and be photographed one final time by somebody else; there will be one last time you will walk on a particular street, one last time you will go out from your house or come back into it.

You will have one last dream, one last orgasm, one last cigarette.  There will be one final time you will see or be seen by the man or the woman you have loved, or the people you have known, unless of course, you outlive them all, which is not likely.

You will lick one last stamp. You won't know it when you do.