A couple of years ago I would have resisted the urge to walk over here and sit on this swing. I would have acknowledged all these people around me, implanted peering eyes in their heads and moved on… but when you're dying, and you know it, the only thing that really matters is what you want. There are no other restrictions, but for yourself and the disease that within your body will some day soon kill you.
How sad it is that people do that, move on from what they want, from this place today in exchange for some kind of self preservation, tied only to pride and fear of judgement. So many of us; only products of the bullies we faced in school and the parents we had whom scarred us, neglected us, left us here, alone in the yard, unsure, insecure… Some are more blessed than others.
I'm unsure too, but not of my desire to sit here on this tall swing in a park made for children, and to swing high, as high as I can, for all of my youth, for the glory that it is to be alive today, for the strength that resides over my fear, which compels me to run and to swim, to breath and to swing from branch to branch of each day, never looking back, appreciating every inch of what it is that I've got: a body…
...though failing.
It's a good thing it can't kill my soul too, my spirit, or the words and love that I leave behind me here.
"You get the urge to swing? And to play in the children's place? Than you play! And you run and swing! Don't let that go, not for anything, not because you're old, or mature, or afraid, or anything but young."
There's no place for regret in these days of dying (admit it, it's on all of our minds); there's only life the way I see it, all around me. And if "the adults" look at me and shake a head or two, while I sit here, pulling hard back on these rusty chains and kicking my boots high into the sky, than it will be them who miss out. I may not gain their respect or understanding, but my heart will thump louder, and be stronger, and continue to thrive in each and every beat that it has left.
