This short story is dedicated to Walter Reed Army medical center and its military and civilian personnel with sincere appreciation for keeping me alive following a recent stroke and allowing me to attend my wife’s funeral: Teresa Rader, Ms. Edith, Ms. Street, Dr. Hegde, Marie Mojica and a special young lady, Liz Tricozzi Loveless.

Before you make the wrong assumption as to my background and qualifications to write a short story on “Life’s Cycle” I would like to assure you, upfront, I am no intellect, no genius, no deep-thinker, have never worked in a ‘skunks work’, was only a bit above the average student throughout college and actually in ever day life have always been just ‘average.’ There are a bit over six-billion people on our blue marble we call Earth and each and every one of them could have written this story, but until they do, this is my version.  So, having said that, I would like to now say, “My mind is never silent and it is continually asking questions, making assumptions, observations and countless and ever changing events of daily living make me…wonder”

Does that qualify me to write this story?

Yep.

So… relax, sit back and enjoy the next few minutes. You just never know when you may glean something from my words that may have gone unnoticed in you everyday life.

The rain has finally stopped and there are patches of blue sky in this otherwise dreary morning. Sitting at my keyboard watching the squirrels, chipmunks and a buzzard overhead all looking for a meal, my mind is relating to them in the daily and constant quest for food and an existence and – I wonder.

Have you ever wondered about ‘things’ such as life, death, what your dog is thinking when you rub it’s ear, is there pain for a fish as it is being filleted, do humming birds ever run into trees as they dart from red flower to sugar feeder?

Picture this scene: you are walking a white sandy beach, or deep in a rain forest or dodging traffic on a busy street of a metropolitan city or in your own backyard and you find that mythical lamp that is the imprisoned home to a Genie. It gives you three wishes, what would you wish for?

                1. Wealth

                2. World peace

                3. Long life

Sure this list of three will vary as there are many variables depending on who you are your background, education, age, etc. but generally those are the three frontrunners that immediately come to mind. If not then just go alone with me on this please – for now.

Wealth – Now this is debatable, but only amongst those that have it. “…having money is not that big of a deal…” I have heard this said many times, but always from someone that has it. Wealth is relative. When I graduated college back in the fifties a good living as a professional architect was considered to be $10k a year. Don’t laugh. Frank Lloyd Wright was my idol and “building things” was my goal in life. There was no such thing as “credit” because if you didn’t have the cash, you saved until you could pay for the item. Today my wallet only holds credit cards and enough green to buy a flower from the street merchant. The National armed forces draft was in-place; there was a cold war followed quickly by a couple shooting wars that changed the way we treat money and our thinking. To make a comfortable living, build things, contributing to man-kind were still visions dancing between my ears until people stated dying around me. $10k is now far below the official government poverty level and if I were still an architect my TurboTax return bottom line would have to be in the high six-figures to live as comfortably as I envisioned fresh out of college. But… I am no Microsoft genius so I settled – and I wondered.

World Peace – I know, I know that will never happen because of the pure nature of man and something Plato once said, “Only the dead have seen the end of war”. Growing up in the south and listening to “World Peace” responses from honeyed red lips beauty contestants with their ever long-legs, high heeled, skimpy bikinis, and perfect figured young ladies, they were either baton-twirlers or short-sighted visionaries that young male adrenalin may have clouded my thinking a bit – but I wondered.

Long life – An elongated life span is relative. I have been in a war (Vietnam) and have seen death up close and personal. As you I have or will I have buryed all my grand-parents, several cousins and nephews, a few neighbors, I buried my father, buried my mother, killed and buried a few bad-guys in sunny Vietnam, buried my sister, had loved ones die in my arms, and recently buried my wife. I have an expensive black suit that is starting to have shiny knees from constant use. A few years back I started losing body parts as they were wearing out but have always used my body the best I knew how. I smoked for a bit until I learned it was bad for me. I use to eat lots of white bacon grease gravy before I saw how it was made. It was hard to give up sausage and liver and onions but I did. Living on seven continents during my middle-years may have changed many of my bad southern eating habits as my fork is now used more in the European style rather then as a shovel from Arkansas.  I was a pre-teen during WWII, have a son, not proud of the fact but I done everything once and many things twice. I have loved many, written twenty million words trying to tell stories…and I still don’t have “life” figured out, BUT I have an idea I would like to pass alone. Even at that, some days, I wonder.

Have you ever wondered about why you are still alive? Look around and you will see folks younger then you dead and they were probable not murdered or died by accident, but something caused them to stop breathing. Something, somewhere is keeping book on you – I think – and I wonder.

As a youth I fell off a scaffold and a two-foot spike grazed my left side. Two inches to the right and I would have been impaled. Mortars destroyed my bunkers three times in Vietnam and friends died but not me. I complained from pain from a hernia a few years ago but during some x-ray work-ups for that hernia, cancer was discovered in my kidney and was cured before it metastasized. I hate TV commercials but was suffering thought one a few months ago as they were talking about the three tests to recognize the first sights of a stroke; look in a mirror and make sure you have a symmetrical smile, raise both arms over your head and voice a complete sentence. That commercial saved my life last month as did an innocent x-ray as did just barely missing a deadly spike and not being in the wrong spot when hot molten shell fragments are killing all around me and many days I sit looking at cloud formations and  – I wonder.   

Much of what I have learned came from listening and watching people and while occupying inpatient beds at Walter Reed Army military hospital in Washington D.C. Trips to VA hospitals also played a role in my learning process but those experiences are well forgotten. For those of us that have spent any time in a hospital bed you remember there’s lot of time for you to “think”. I have many kudos for Walter Reed and maybe the least important of all but personal important, to me anyway are the beds. During my last stay during April 2007 recovering from a stroke, the beds were actually comfortable. I am still alive so that, in itself speaks volumes for the Crown Jewel of the military hospitals and the dedicated military and civilian personal that run them. Don’t get confused here. I’m only talking about the hospital personal and the care received NOT the VA and its broken compensation sorry program.    

We are all going to die. Dying is a part of living. Because we are animals we will someday die. It is a rule of nature. We can change some rules of man, but Mother Nature rules were/are made by our Maker and they can not be brokered, challenged, debated or altered. We can be sent into an Earth orbit, we can sustain our breathing with the right combination of medications and tubing but there is no way out of Life – alive. We WILL die – someday. But I sometimes wonder.

What I have finally come to grips with is death. As I see it death is “nothing”.  Maybe I need to qualify my southern use of that word.  If you saw the Clint Eastwood movie, “Million dollar Baby” you may remember near the end when Hillary Swank was in her hospital bed begging to die Clint gave her a shot and said, “This will put you to sleep” and it did. He than gave her another shot saying, “…and this will keep you asleep.” I cried and now I wonder. I have seen many die; most civilians die quietly and peacefully. No military person has ever died peacefully as they/we usually have either ugly holes torn from us or body parts scattered all over the country side. If there is pain involved the dying part is significant but death stops all your pain - promise.

I attended a funeral last year where a good friend had been fighting ALS and during the grave site ceremony the priest said, “…now Gary has won his fight with his cancer…” I frankly didn’t understand how Gary had “won” but maybe the priest was referring to the fact Gary did not have to worry about controlling muscles, speech, and eating and toilet control anymore.  I guess we all win or lose races in our own way and in our own mind, I wondered.

Frank Sinatra’s last two spoken words were, “I’m losing.”

My wife just closed her eyes and was gone, as did my dad, my sister and two VC I dispatched in Vietnam. A loved one smiled weakly, opened her mouth slightly to say something but couldn’t. Her eyes dilated, her mouth drooped slightly, her arm around my neck fell lifeless to her side and she too, was gone.

Gone where?

Do I believe in a God? Sure.

Do I believe there is a life or something after our earthly death? There are a few questions about this one but I figure I will just have to wait until I sit at the right hand of God - and I’ll ask him/her. But having said that there is the question of reincarnation that I have always been interested in. 

The Bible gives clear indications that reincarnation exists.  In Matthew 3:3 a prophecy delivered by the prophet Isaiah was quoted, "A voice of one calling in the desert, `Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.'" Later in chapter 17 verses 10-13, the disciples asked Jesus, "Why then do the teachers of the law say that Elijah must come first?" Jesus replied, "To be sure, Elijah comes and will restore all things.  But I tell you, Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him, but have done to him everything they wished. In the same way the Son of Man is going to suffer at their hands."  Then the disciples understood that he was talking to them about John the Baptist."

Jesus clearly taught that Elijah had been reincarnated as John the Baptist.  The disciples seemingly had no trouble understanding this.  

I do but then again I was not a chosen one to be a disciple. If/when I am reincarnated I only hope I come back a lot smarter.  Kinda makes me wonder.

THE LIFE CYCLE AND MAN (I found this on the Internet and it is a bit dry reading but I promise you will gather a bit of knowledge from the next short paragraphs. Trust me)

In the beginning planet Earth was only rock, water and air with a never ending supply of energy beamed down daily from the sun. But there was no life on earth.

There was no grass, trees or flowers on Earth because there was no soil. It takes soil to grow plants and sustain life. But, it takes decaying life to make and sustain soil.

At some point as our planet rotated in its planned orbit through space the Almighty saw fit to breathe life onto earth, very meager and primitive life, but life with a crucial mission.

As these micro-forms of life lived and reproduced, they fed on and etched away at the rocky mineral earth surface, and as they died, their remains formed humus and mild acids to etch away still more minerals. The process of their decaying bodies and decaying rock went on and on creating our first fertile soil.

Even though extremely small, the life, death and decay of each preceding life form has been creating better conditions for future life forms than were there before. The decay process builds with added interest to the soil's bank account, and after countless centuries of creating conditions for higher and more complex forms of life, Man, the most complex of all life, was able to exist and be sustained.

Walk into the woods and meadows and visit with Nature. You will be in the presence of much life. Especially in the spring, you will find many types of plants, grass, trees, animals and insects-large and small. There will be life in abundance.

Now take a closer look. There is an equal amount of death, particularly in the winter. There will be dead grass and leaves, fallen limbs and trees, even dead animals and insects.

Every living thing will sooner or later die: no living creature, plant or animal, escapes death. In Nature, every dead thing is deposited in the very place it dies, and there it serves as a mulch protecting the soil until it finally decays and in due time is covered and replaced by still later deposits of expired life.

When a plant or animal dies, even though it may be consumed higher in the food chain, it will eventually be eaten by the decomposing microbes. They will decay or disassemble it and put it back into the soil. If they didn't, our planet would now be miles deep in dead things.

This life-death-decay-life cycle has built the thin layer of fertile soil that covers our land. It nourishes and grows our plants which are the bridge of life between the soil and man.

Man...Does he know? And can he trace his life support systems far enough back to understand the life cycles? Man has accumulated much knowledge, but in areas of his healthy existence he seems to be slow to learn. Man sees death as a loss, or something to be sorrowful of, and he considers decay as something ugly. He doesn't understand why Nature always returns the dead back to the soil from where it came.

If man understood the laws of recycle and return, he would without delay put back into the farmlands all the mineral and energy rich organic waste materials his life stile generates. He wouldn't be daily wasting the mountains of manure and thousands of tons of bio-solids and other organic materials that he buries in landfills that seal and lock them away from the life generating; natural Soil building processes that our food producing soils so urgently need.

In a natural environment, there is no waste. All is reused, and usually made into something of still greater value for sustenance of life.

If man continues to break this law of return, he will not only stop the life-generating processes of the soil. He will actually cause the soil to degenerate--a process that will sooner or later degrade all life ... including man himself.

In all of us is a scholar, a statesman, a professional that is family and community orientated and admit it, there is a bit of ham and want-to-bee lurking in the shadows of our mind that craves the classics. For example the play As You Like It by William Shakespeare (1564–1616), first performed in 1599 and first published in 1623. The famous soliloquy spoken by Jaques that begins "All the world's a stage" presents seven stages in the life of man, with the end marking a return to the beginning:

All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players:

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.

And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like a snail

Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,

Sighing like a furnace, with a woeful ballad

Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,

Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lined,

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances;

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,

His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide

For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion,

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

William had a way with words and they kinda makes you wonder.

So you see, it makes no difference if you are a scientist, a scholar, a romantic, or just your every-day average Joe or Jane citizen it all boils down to if you are a military veteran, don’t trust your VA for benefits as they are budget driven but you can trust your military medical personal, the military hospital care and if you are a civilian you can basically trust all your medical dedicated people as they will keep you on earth for as long a time as you have been allotted – but some days I still wonder.

Thanks again Liz.